Posted on 10/23/2022 7:14:12 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
On Monday, Tarmac Aerosave tweeted that it had started to scrap an Airbus A380 in Teruel, Spain. The aircraft is the seventh to be scrapped by the company, with six having been scrapped in Tarbes. Other companies around the world have scrapped further A380s.
...Meanwhile, Air France has retired all of its Airbus A380s. Out of the entire fleet, two went to Teruel,
About MSN 64 As mentioned above, MSN 64 was registered as F-HPJF during its time in service with Air France. The aircraft first flew on August 27th, 2010, and was delivered on June 17th, the following year.
(Excerpt) Read more at simpleflying.com ...
The A380; Too BIG! Too late into the market. Too thirsty.
Our rolling stone son has been everywhere on them and thinks highly of the A380.
The big failing of the plane is that, unlike the 747, it was not designed from the get go for cargo. That means far fewer of those planes are being sold than would otherwise be the case and with that they become more expensive to buy and to maintain.
Boeing was hedging its bet with the multirole 747 and it paid off huge for them.
Boeing bet the company on the 747. It wasn’t hedging, they went all in.
I was on a very early 747 flight from Chicago to Toyko, the entertainment system failed.
They took a vote of the passengers for a quick stop at Boing Field to pick up some technicians.
They worked furiously without success.
Also on one of the famous Vietnamese orphan flights Toyko-Seattle (???)
I still remember the hostess asking if I would like to hold a baby. Thinking back, I regretfully declined.
Well...that was an expensive lesson for the commercial aircraft industry in general and for Airbus in particular. I’ve worked in the commercial aircraft industry for over 30 years and I’ve never seen an airframe program that began with so much industry hype, had so much initial design/manufacturing problems and then retired so soon. The first A380 entered service at the end of 2007. In comparison the B747 entered service in Jan, 1970. Its good to know for certain what NOT to do I ‘spose.
Personally - in terms of passenger comfort - the A380 is the pinnacle.
Open question:
Has anyone factored the estimated losses to the Airbus consortium?
I’m sure that it’s in the tens of billion$.
A quick search finds that this source echoes my rough guess
https://aviationweek.com/shownews/dubai-airshow/what-went-wrong-airbus-a380
“But after Emirates finally pulled the plug on a large follow-up order that would have saved the program in the winter of 2018, it was up to departing Airbus CEO Tom Enders to finally decide the ending for the A380. It had become clear that Airbus would never recover the €25 billon ($30 billion) or so in research and development costs sunk into the program over the years. And with no new orders keeping production open even at minimal rates, it became unsustainable. Europe’s most ambitious commercial aircraft program post-Concorde had become a gigantic failure and a prime example of management reading the market improperly.”
Some of the problems, like the wiring harness, may have been just bad luck.
And the more complex the plan, the more likely to occur.
The cargo variant was their hedge bet, I thought that was clear. I know they went all in but had the passenger version failed they had a fall back.
That has more to do with capable airports being everywhere so that the hub system on which big liners depend is crumbling. Without the hub system smaller aircraft that are easier to fill up make lots of sense,
That’s why Emirates, which has a huge hub well positioned geographically, is flying these and loving them even though other airlines ... not so much.
central planners ignoring all signals from the market to proceed with a grand, top-down, forced conclusion - A380 was a perfect example of a socialist-government-political-bureaucratic creation
I just read that whole article, very incomplete and shallow. Why are they being scrapped? Are they defective are they were out even at 37,000 of 150+ thousand mile lifespan? Or as one comment in the comments noted, maybe this was simply a government funded effort that was unneeded.
There is no financial loss since this was a government funded effort. The European taxpayers paid for this, which has been a problem with airbus, competing against Boeing and other commercial manufacturers.
—”Has anyone factored the estimated losses to the Airbus consortium?”
An interesting question.
The $30 Billion is the total package, mostly from taxpayers everywhere. The actual write-down is looking a bit illusive.
That said I did find this nice homage to the fat bird.
https://www.dw.com/en/airbus-a380-the-end-of-a-multibillion-dollar-dream/a-60124995
“”I said to Airbus’ CEO Guillaume Faury: ‘This thing has got real life and legs for us, this is not a funeral, just the last of these great airplanes,’” Clark told DW. “And we will fly the A380 as a very potent aircraft until the mid-2030s, so we’ve got 14 to 15 years before we retire them.””
Don’t think I’ve ever heard it put that way. Found this on Wiki:
“In 1965, Joe Sutter was transferred from Boeing’s 737 development team to manage the design studies for the new airliner, already assigned the model number 747.[9] Sutter began a design study with Pan Am and other airlines to better understand their requirements. At the time, many thought that long-range subsonic airliners would eventually be superseded by supersonic transport aircraft.[10] Boeing responded by designing the 747 so it could be adapted easily to carry freight and remain in production even if sales of the passenger version declined.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747
1965 was pretty early in the program so it could be that they considered that too be a hedge. Air cargo was a small business in 65 so if it was a hedge somebody had great vision.
And the more complex the plan, the more likely to occur.
Millions of parts all provided by the low bidder. What could go wrong?
Cargo mainly needs a good truck to, pardon the expression, take off.
In terms of capacity the 747 was a game changer for air freight. The early turbofan engines reducing fuel consumption was a very big deal too.
Point taken (obvious), but my tack was to estimate the impact it would have had upon Boeing had they taken the bait.
Yes, ‘bait’: I believed at the time and maintain that this was a globalist effort to destroy Boeing.
Ironically, despite all the idiocy and adopted idiots stemming from the McDonnell Douglas debacle, they made the right choice in this case.
Airbus wanted to unilaterally define air traffic by using hubs. Boeing did a survey that showed passengers wanted to go point-to-point. (Duh.) So they did the 787. Much better business decision. The A380 was probably the worst modern-day business decision ever made.
Boeing designed the 47 for the military as cargo. They lost to the C5. C5 is front and rear load. Turns out the Rear load was harder than it appears and it took years and lots of Tax money to get it right.
Full disclosure; C5 Navigation Avionics repair (USAF)qualified
Twenty plus years Boeing Experimental flight test.
I know a little bit about both aircraft.
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