JMT21

http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=2...O9o&refer=home

I tend to think the A380 will fly very few passengers...I bet cargo ends up getting almost all of them.

Typhoonpilot

That is generally the mindset of the U.S. airline industry that you are mirroring. It is because you have no concept of how many city pairs could easily support an aircraft the size of an A380. I'll give you a few for examples:

DXB-KHI
DXB-JED
DXB-CAI
DXB-LHR
DXB-JFK
DXB-SYD
DXB-BKK
DXB-BOM
DXB-DAC

That is just for one airline. The Japanese, Chinese, and European carriers would all be able to put the A380 on some of their passenger routes. American carriers think small and that is why they have suffered such tragic losses over the last 5 years. Carriers throughout the world that think big and deploy large aircraft have been raking in money hand over fist in the meantime.


Typhoonpilot

rickair7777

I agree the 380 makes sense in large scale, long range markets where it is not important to offer any flexibility on departure schedule...folks going to from one continent to another for a once-in-a-lifetime vacation or pilgrimage don't care what time of day or day-of-the-week they depart.

You may not be familiar with americans, but they are accustomed to airline schedules at their convenience...any flight within the US/Canada/Mexico (or even to western europe) must offer convenient departure times, otherwise the customers will go elsewhere. One 380 cannot offer flexible schedules, but three 737's or 320's can.

Pacific routes might be a different story, but that is not the majority of US airline business.

Space Monkey

From what I'm observing the A-380 seems to be becoming more and more of a spruce goose... Everytime they fix something another engineering problem comes up... Plus many of the early on engineering problems encountered with this aircraft still havent been fixed... The real laugh is that they are already talking about building an ever bigger version of it when they cant even get the current one right. To say the least I wouldn't be suprised if this aircraft never actaully makes it to the line at any aircarrier cargo or pax and I would also not be supriesd if Airbus goes bankrupt or at very least winds up with some serious financial trouble in the process....

Typhoonpilot

I'm intimately familiar with the U.S. Airline business. Not to pick on you, but you have just proved my point. You are displaying small airplane mentality with your above statement. The problem with the U.S. airline market is the size of the airplanes. Every major airline raided every other major airlines cachement area with RJs. The first one to do it was successful, but it was doomed to failure when they all started doing it to each other. Now the skies are full of little airplanes flying long distances in search of elusive passengers. This has resulted in airport ( LGA summer 2000 ) and airspace ( entire NE area ) issues which are only going to get worse.

The smart airlines fly big airplanes and carry cargo. Large passsenger jets like the 777, 747, MD-11, A330, A340 have a lot of cargo capacity. That is a great revenue source for them. When the legacies pulled their narrowbodys out of the smaller communities they also lost revenue income as it couldn't be put on an RJ. When legacies started flying narrowbodys cross country they lost revenue because narrowbodys can't carry much cargo across the country with full gas tanks.

Ultra large airplanes aren't the ultimate answer, but they do have a place. Less small airplanes is definite in the future. We're already seing it with the growth of the RJ size from 50 up to 70+ seats.

Airlines like Cathay Pacific, Singapore, Emirates, China Airlines, Korean Airlines, etc have massive cargo capacity in both passenger jets and dedicated cargo aircraft. The A380 makes sense for them because they service very high pax numbers on many city pairs and they carry lots of cargo between those same city pairs. So there will be demand for the A380 just as long as it meets it's performance targets.



TP

Ottopilot

Yea, the US airline business is in trouble because they fly RJ's from New York City to Albany and not an A380. I thought the majority of the airline problems are from 9/11, the price of oil, and low domestic ticket prices. Why are airlines in the US getting more profitable by dumping their larger planes that they cannot fill? The more profitable airlines have downsized in aircraft- look at Continental, they fly 757's to Europe and 737's transcontinental. Sure, the A380 may find a market on a few big city routes, but there are more small cities in the US than big cities. RJ's have a place too (more of a place than the A380). The 50 seat RJ's are not being replaced by 70-90 RJ's. The DC-9, 737, MD80, etc are being replaced with larger RJ's (it's cheaper: gas and pilots). The smaller RJ's are still flying, they are not parked in the desert.

Typhoonpilot

Again somebody who has missed the point. SWA, Airtran, Frontier, jetBlue, etc are the ones who benefit because legacies pulled their jets off routes to smaller communities. Those cities scream for quality service and bigger airplanes when a USAir 737 gets replaced by an RJ. The legacies are showing a small profit because they've so drasticaly reduced costs ( and quality of life for their employees ) and because the travel market is in a cyclical upturn. Meanwhile the LCCs and major International airlines make masive profits.

LCCs are a different business model, but even some of them are starting to get widebody aircraft. Jet* International in Australia is starting out with A330s and will get B787s when they come out.

The U.S. carriers should fly the B737 to Albany and then have those passengers connect to a small widebody for their cross country flight to the west coast or a large widebody for their trans-Atlantic flight.


TP

fogrunner

[QUOTE]If that was only true. How about DEN-DFW-TYS all on an RJ or YYZ-CVG-MIA. The nice thing about the RJ is at least the crew are usually pleasant and accomadating to the people they are carrying.




This is good? The sad fact is when have you ever seen a US Airline in the "top ten" of say Conde Nast. US Airlines crossing the Pacific or Atlantic are poor to say the least when it comes to offering any type of quality service.
I am sorry to say this but AA, CAL, DL, UAL etc. cannot hold a candle to the likes of Emirates, Cathay, BA, Virgin, LH.



What happened to the majority of the Independence Air RJs? To the desert perhaps? They found out the hard way that the RJ is an expensive stand alone a/c to operate based on revenue seat miles. In fact towards the end they were trying to replace their RJs with the A319.
There is a huge difference in a "Fee for departure" business model as opposed to a stand alone product.

edik

Just get rid of the 380 and go with the 747-8

fogrunner

Conde Nast Traveler Readers' Choice Awards 2005



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