Virgin delays delivery of Airbus superjumbos
 

Does anyone see a real market for a plane that will have a $10 billion investment only to carry so many passengers at a single time? I might be Boeing biased but the 7E7 really does look like a dreamliner next to the 380. CLE-LGW on a 757 is not the best but it sure is great to fly non-stop. I think the future is in a smaller plane not larger. Faster would be the key not bigger.

We need a cheap running concorde.

The 380 is basically aimed at the sort of route where some airlines already dispatch two or more 744s at the same time flying "wingtip to wingtip". If air traffic continues to grow at the rate at which it has, historically, there will be more and more of these routes. The big question for Airbus is whether that section of the market place is going to get big enough fast enough for it to recover its investment.

And of course the USAToday article indicates that the reason VS is delaying delivery has nothing to do with demand, but rather with the fact that one of the airports (LAX) out of which VS plans to operate the plane will not be ready in time. Because of the size of the airplane, airports need to widen their runways and modify taxiways and gate areas to accommodate the plane.

Look in the SQ and VS forums
 

LAX claims it will be ready for the A380 by 2006. However, there is a report in Les Echos, a French financial paper, that the A380 is currently 10 tonnes overweight. VS does not want to experience teething troubles as it did with the A340-600 (sme 3 tonnes or more overweight).

Ironically, AF said it was consider delaying delivery of the A380 because parts of CDG terminal 2 may not be ready, and this was before parts of 2E, built to accomodate for the A380, collapsed.