A decade after debut, first A380 jumbos to be broken up

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbus-a380/a-decade-after-debut-first-a380-jumbos-to-be-broken-up-idUSKCN1J10R2

by Element_ • 8 years ago

75 112 8 years ago

kokey• 8 years ago

It's a shame these didn't sell in the numbers that Airbus initially hoped for, but I also think breaking these down for parts make a lot of sense considering that updating the customer interior of such a large aircraft for a new operator is so expensive.

I hope Airbus can continue making this model, if they can keep bringing the cost down as manufacturing of this continues to improve, that should be possible.

JumpCrisscross4• 8 years ago

I hope Airbus can continue making this model

The A380 was doomed from the start. It was built to compete with the 747, a jet which first flew in 1969 [1] and designed for hub-and-spoke "trunk" routes. In that narrow aim, the A380 succeeded. The problem is the entire A380/747 category peaked before the A380's first flight. High-efficiency engines mean long-and-skinny routes are now profitable. Instead of packing Chicago to London and D.C. to London passengers into a JFK-Heathrow megaflight, one runs Chicago-Heathrow and D.C.-Heathrow with medium jets.

At the end of the day, the A380 was designed to be impressive to European politicians more than to airline executives.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747

hodgesrm3• 8 years ago

It's interesting that Europeans also went live with the Concorde, another 'consortium' product whose technology hype did not match the economics.

To be fair other Airbus models like the A32x line have been phenomenally successful.

robbiep2• 8 years ago

The bigger question which is still unaddressed is: with the growth in passenger traffic, will there be a return to hub and spoke, or can long and skinny win?

Even if the a380 is dead, food for thought: In 5-10 years we may have a 300 person 1 hr transport from sydney to New York by way of the BFR. That is hub and spoke

selectodude4• 8 years ago

I mean, British Airways flies a 747-400 and an A380 daily to Chicago. It's cities like Austin, TX, San Jose, CA and Portland, OR that are getting huge boosts of non-stop service to western europe.

joezydeco• 8 years ago

The only reason Airbus is continuing is because of the large order from Emirates, and who knows what they hell they think they can do with over 100 A380s and 50+ more on order.

InTheArena7• 8 years ago

EK is still pushing on the global hub concept. They recently have been talking to Denver about a non-stop ther, but I don't see how you do that when there are already 7 non-stops to Europe (two Norwegian, one united, One Edelweiss, two Lufthansa, one Iceland Air) and one non-stop to Asia, plus connections on both sides of the country.

That's route fragmentation at work.

sitepodmatt3• 8 years ago

I think its 20 on the way with some more options. regardless of the economics the a380 is best in class in economy for Joe public since the densification program of the 777 started some years ago - Qatar used to be great in 9 across - 10 sucks, and the change to 3/3/3 on 787 vs initial guidelines of 2/4/2 which only JAL stuck to. Unless invested, or a 26" waist, or flying biz, one should be wishing a future success of a380. Economy sucks but a380 makes it bearable

InTheArena7• 8 years ago

The exact opposite is happening. They need a certain number of orders to keep the line efficient. Only the recent A380 order by EK keeps them above that line, and just barely at that.

majurg• 8 years ago

Consumers preferring point-to-point air travel killed the A380.

dingaling• 8 years ago

Which is ironic as the self-proclaimed 'King of point to point', the 787, mainly flies between or from hubs.

It's the smaller and more mundane 737 Max and A320 Neo that are following the lead of the old 757 as hub-bypassers.

I also note that no reference was made to the fact that Boeing has broken-up two early, unsaleable, 787s and took a $1.25 billion charge for doing so. Billion.

sitepodmatt3• 8 years ago

Unless list for a 787 is 600m and there no salvagable parts these figures see way wrong

lostlogin4• 8 years ago

Isn’t it in Boeing’s interest to have that figure as high as possible for tax reasons?

walrus01• 8 years ago

The very early 787 production after those two units were sold to Ethiopian at a significant discount. They are far overweight and were plagued with a series of defects requiring warranty service.

hodgesrm3• 8 years ago

Early copies of a new plane tend to be less efficient and Singapore Airlines recently ordered some new A380s. However, overall demand is thinner than Airbus expected, forcing it to slow production to a trickle while looking for more business.

Boeing had sales difficulties with 787 aircraft early in the production run due to excess weight among other issues. [0] The rest of the article makes it seem this does not apply to the A380s in question, so it's more a reflection of weak market demand. The problem of reselling customized planes is an interesting issue--so far as I know Boeing 747s did not have the problem. This seems unique to the A380.

[0] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/internati...

Arnt• 8 years ago

The A380 did have weight and other issues early on. The A380s that are being broken up were replaced with new ones (Singapore Airlines leased five early A380s for ten years, when the lease was ended they didn't renew, but instead bought five new ones from Airbus).

ak2172• 8 years ago

Boeing did go out of their way to make sure those "change incorporation" frames ended up in working condition and flying with customers. This spreadsheet shows what happened: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FH3Y2-vRUgojntPkCSJI... - look at the dates in the "Load"/"Delivered" columns up to LN 19. LN 10 spent almost 8 years before entering revenue service.

In Airbus's case, the equivalent might be to buy back the frames and place them with customers at a subsidy. There's definitely a marketing hit that they take when a 10 year old flagship airframe is scrapped.

hodgesrm3• 8 years ago

Wow! Where did these numbers come from? (This is what I love about HN.)

It's awesome you can see details like the distribution of RR vs. GE engines, just to pick one bit of interesting data out of that sheet.

sandworm101• 8 years ago

I was going to make a comment about the a380's efficiency, that it had a very low carbon emission per passenger-mile, but....

>> Throwing the loss-making program a lifeline for a decade, Emirates recently ordered up to 36 more A380s and set out plans on Tuesday to install 56 Premium Economy seats.

Ya. If it is going to live on as a luxury liner, its upper deck wasted on a handfull of seats, it is an environmental nightmare.

JumpCrisscross4• 8 years ago

Emirates needs the A380. Its airport exists as an East-West hub. The modern trend, running long-and-skinny direct routes, cuts Dubai out. (Instead of Paris --> Dubai --> Delhi, one can now just fly Paris --> Delhi.)

rootusrootus• 8 years ago

Premium economy is still pretty dense, though a lot better than coach. The reason I flew BA for my last PDX-HYD visit was because BA has prem econ and Emirates doesn't. Otherwise I think I'd stick with Emirates. Nice to see them adding the option.

InTheArena7• 8 years ago

The A380 program was almost terminated this year, and only a lifeline order by Emirates (which is incredibly exposed, as they have almost half of the A380s that have been delivered or ordered) kept the line alive. Lessors won't touch the plane due to a lack of a secondary market (as reflected in this order).

The problem with the A380 was that it was a prestige project formed around a core concept that never materialized, and was directly opposite of the trend over the last 30 years. Namely routes were becoming more fragmented, not less. The a380 required huge amounts of centralization for it to be effective. Places where that is true - Dubai primarily - it's worked well. Everyone else it simply is way to big. None of the passenger or cargo carriers in the United States, which has half of world wide lift, have received a A380.

Several studies have concluded that the only reason the A380 was feasible was because of Government launch aide. When you looked at it logically and with non-pollyannaish analysis, you do the same thing that Boeing did with the 747-600/700 and cancel it. (Boeing eventually built a scaled down 747-8i, which was also a failure, but it only cost them a few billion instead of tens of billions).

_Codemonkeyism4• 8 years ago

I do think the A380 helped Airbus brand image a lot. It might not be worth the money invested.

InTheArena7• 8 years ago

Yep, I think the A380 helped both Airbus's and Europe's brand.

And that's why the government assistance in the form of launch aide might have been worth it.

sametmax• 8 years ago

Which is sad given they are the most comfortable planes I've been in. Lot of space, lots of entry points, very quiet, and almost zero vibration.

gadders• 8 years ago

Emirates Economy on an a380 was the best economy class I have used.

Reason0773• 8 years ago

These particular aircraft that are being scrapped were very early-production A380s which were delivered significantly overweight (rumoured to be >5 tonnes!) Singapore Airlines planned to return them years ago and is, in fact, replacing them with new A380s. Other airlines don't want them because they are the worst A380s flying: their extra weight means they burn too much fuel.

Certainly the A380 program hasn't been quite as successful as Airbus would have hoped, but I'm not sure it was ever in any real danger of being scrapped. Those rumours may have just been put out by Airbus in order to pressure Emirates into moving ahead with their order.

There are still airlines like British Airways who have a lot of old B747s in service that are approaching their EOL. It seems likely that BA will order more A380s to replace at least some of these.

And in any case, there are still more than 100 unfulfilled A380 orders on Airbus's books, meaning there's enough demand to keep production running for quite a few years to come, even if there were no additional orders.

selectodude4• 8 years ago

It seems likely that BA will order more A380s to replace at least some of these.

They already bought their A380s. They're not buying any more. The 747 will most likely be replaced by A350-1000s or 777-9s.

J-dawg• 8 years ago

How does a plane end up being overweight? And how did the weight get reduced on later models?

woodandsteel• 8 years ago

Maybe the A380 program will continue for many years, but it seems unlikely the program as a whole, including development costs, will ever earn a profit.

pasbesoin• 8 years ago

Why has it not caught on for cargo? Too inefficient? Too much investment in support facilities, tooling, staff required -- and/or too insecure? (Regarding the latter, no one's going to buy a couple of bargain basement priced planes, in the face of support requirements.)

larkeith• 8 years ago

According to another comment [1], it's because their cargo mass is not as large as their volume, relatively to other planes.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17266194

jandrese3• 8 years ago

IIRC the cargo doors are too small and the space is broken up by a structural component (the second floor). The 747 was designed from the outset to be converted to a cargo hauler (hence the cockpit mounted on top) so it's much easier for a heavy lifter to work with.

nabla9• 8 years ago

Both UPS and FedEX canceled their A380 orders decade ago because A380 was late and used 767's and 747s are cheap.

There will be another opportunity when existing fleets are used up and fuel costs continue to increase. Converting stripped A380s into freight might be a good option.

Couriers use spoke and hub model that A380 is well suited for.

mnw21cam• 8 years ago

The problem with the A380 for freight is that it has a lower cargo density. That is, it has a much greater interior volume than other planes, but not as proportionately greater maximum cargo mass. This is great for passengers (more legroom, etc), but not so much for cargo. Unless it's a shipment of guitars.

InTheArena7• 8 years ago

To be fair, the A380F was delayed indefinitely before UPS and Fedex canceled their order. It was a bit of a "I broke up with you before you could break up with me" thing.

The current A380s are not a good fit for freight (lack of nose loading and crappy density), and ironically the freight logistics actually make the A380 harder to use. This is because the most efficient way to do overnight and freight traffic between Europe, Asia and America is to centralize traffic in places like anchorage with a fleet of smaller planes that go to smaller cities. (IE, traffic can go directly from Denver to Shenzhen via a 767 to Anchorage, and another 767 from Anchorage to Shenzhen). You can't put a A380 on each leg of that.

AmVess• 8 years ago

It's not popular on the used market because of the $40 million reconfiguration bill. This plane really only works well for Emirates flying people to a few airports.

tannhaeuser• 8 years ago

It's sad, but such are economic realities. I've seen an A380 flying directly over my head at low altitude at a show a couple years ago. I was super-impressed at how agile, almost sports plane-like it was behaving.

lostlogin4• 8 years ago

It’s less impressive when it’s over your backyard. They have been trialing a more aggressive landing approach here in Auckland. It’s lower, faster and shorter and it’s very irritating. It’s been handled aggressively by the airport but I sort of admire their handling. They started with the more annoying option as a test, so any future route will seem like a concession to public pressure.

They have been encouraging people to complain, then producing stats showing that a high percentage of complaints relate to old flight paths.

https://corporate.aucklandairport.co.nz/smart-approaches

gshakir• 8 years ago

A380 comfort level beats 787 and others. You will never feel the take off or landing and no turbulence either. I have flown with Emirates and I am hesitant to fly anything else. The business class experience was amazing with full recline seats. Fly them and try it out yourselves.

InTheArena7• 8 years ago

I respectfully vehemently disagree. I like EK and their A380s, but give me a 787, even on a budget carrier like Norwegian. Lower atmospheric pressure and higher humidity, plus a non-stop makes all the difference in the world.I'm fine, even on a old 777 from the US to Asia, but US to Europe wrecks me on anything but a 787.

I haven't flown a A350 yet, but my understanding is that the humidity is lower (due to the fact it's not a true composite frame) so I am more likely to get jet-lag.

koyote• 8 years ago

I don't think you can really compare EK A380 with any 787, especially in Economy.

The problem with the 787 is that pretty much every operator has decided to cram as many seats in as possible. It's probably the worst plane to fly long haul in currently. The A380 is by far the quietest and smoothest plane operating at the moment. EK's A380 in particular have ample legroom and seat width.

I've flown on numerous 787, A350 and A380 flights on various operators and although I can definitely tell the difference between an A330/777/747 flight and the planes above in terms of jet-lagginess after a flight, I can not tell the difference between these newer planes. All three of them are much more comfortable and have better air.

lostlogin4• 8 years ago

but US to Europe wrecks me on anything but a 787.

That gave me a pained laugh. I’m doing a 17 hour flight next week and expect to be feeling pretty bad.

Scoundreller• 8 years ago

US to Europe wrecks me on anything but a 787.

The from/to really matters here.

NYC-London is about 7 hours. LA-Rome is about 12 hours.

reaperducer2• 8 years ago

I've flown both Singapore's A380's and more 787's than I can count. You're right, the A380 is very comfortable, but that's not 100% about the plane. It's about how the airline outfits the cabin.

I will grant you that the A380 is super duper crazy quiet compared with most other large jets. But legroom and lie-flat seats are available on all kinds of jumbo jets.

Except the Concorde. I had the privilege of flying that once. It was significantly smaller and less comfortable than I'd imagined it would be. But it made up for it in flight time.

Short flight with less comfort > Long flight with more comfort.

busterarm• 8 years ago

I can't imagine anything even approaching as small and uncomfortable as the Concorde. If anyone doesn't believe me, there's one at the Intrepid Museum.

I could barely board the thing and walk down an aisle, let alone try sitting in a seat. I can't imagine it being comfortable for anyone over 5'5".

paulsutter• 8 years ago

What I loved about the A380 was the cheap last minute business class seats on LA/Tokyo because they couldn’t fill it up otherwise, the whole upper deck was business. Good for me bad for the airline.

vermontdevil• 8 years ago

Five of the top 27 long haul flights are on A380. I was surprised to learn this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_flights

lostlogin4• 8 years ago

The top 5 are NZ and Australia - this possibly explains my hatred of airports and dislike for flying. I’m trying the longest one next week, with a child.

mrpippy2• 8 years ago

As others have said, these 2 airframes are the first two delivered, significantly overweight and a nightmare to maintain. The frames were essentially wired by hand, after the pre-made wiring harnesses were the wrong length (French/German Airbus facilities used different versions of CATIA, the lengths didn't match, 2 year delay costing billions)

bodi• 8 years ago

An excellent Smithsonian documentary on the whole project for anyone interested.

https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/mighty-planes/airbu...

olskool• 8 years ago

A major problem for the A380 is that it is too large for the gates at most airports and the airports have little incentive to build up for just a few flights.

TheMagicHorsey• 8 years ago

This is why huge, govt-subsidized projects often fail. The people that conceive and plan these projects with govt. aid do not bear the full extent of its failure. They don't have skin in the game. Perversely, sometimes its better for their career to helm or participate in a failed large prestige project than it would be to participate in more successful smaller projects.

Europe isn't alone in these debacles. Military procurement in the USA is rife with the same BS.

And I don't want to pretend like private companies don't do the same thing on their own (Google Plus anyone?) ... but at least private companies pay the costs on their own and make the heads of failed projects feel the pain (or if they don't ... the companies go out of business or get cut down to size soon enough ... like HP).

A decade after debut, first A380 jumbos to be broken up

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