05.13.07
Posted in Uncategorized
at 10:12 pm
This, Airbus insists, will change forever the market for long-haul flights.
But even if the aerospace giant is right in its assertion that tomorrow’s long distance air travel will be from hub to hub - or large airports that can cope with the A380’s size, as opposed to direct long-haul flights between smaller airports - there are no guarantees that it will be able to recoup the $12bn invested in the aircraft.
Similar financial concerns could play on the mind of airlines which have ordered the aircraft.
There are real concerns that rather than being a giant luxury transporter that brings greater comforts to customers, the A380 might be used as a ‘cattle-class’ transporter for the masses by airlines struggling to recoup their costs.
Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized
at 10:06 pm
Thirty-eight years after launch of Boeing 747, as hundreds of journalists watched the brand new Airbus A380 descend onto runways in the United States for the first time, they were encouraged to compare it with the Boeing 747. My advice to Airbus: Don’t go there.
There are similarities between the A380 and the 747 of course. Both airplanes have shattered beyond imagination the limits of how much weight can be safely lifted off the ground and flown around the world. And like the 747, the A380 with its $300 million price tag is a high-stakes gamble.
But the A380 cuts a lumbering silhouette with its unrelentingly bulbous fuselage and large vertical stabilizer. Inside, the wide staircase connecting the two seating decks is the only flourish to an otherwise conventional passenger cabin.
Ironically, the French-British government consortium that produced the Concorde beat Boeing to the goal. The SST plane flew from 1976 until 2003 and was not a financial prize for its makers.
An economically successful supersonic commercial airplane remains aviation’s Gordian knot, but the Boeing 747 is still being produced in Everett, with more than 1,500 sold.
In some ways the A380 is better than the 747. It generously incorporates lighter composite materials. Its jet engines produce more thrust and lift more weight. By minimizing fuel consumption, the A380 gives its operators slight but much appreciated wiggle room in the binding that ties them to oil prices.
Those are the kinds of benefits the accountants appreciate. The intangible factors that turned the 747 into the “Queen of the Sky,” while a Lockheed L-1011 is relegated to a footnote in aviation history are harder to understand.
Permalink