Originally Posted by fdcg27
Originally Posted by edyvw
Originally Posted by fdcg27
Originally Posted by Mr Nice
Airbus was foolish to think an aircraft much bigger than a 747-400 would be very successful.
I wonder what was the demand for new 747s when the A380 was still on the 'drawing board' ?
Airports were foolish to spend big $$$ money to remodel for the A380. I knew when UPS and FedEx had no interest in this aircraft..... the A380 would have a short career with passenger airlines.
By the time AIrbus committed to the A380 Boeing had already replaced the 747 with its own 777.
The Airbus answer to the 747 was the A340 which the 777 killed in the market.
Both Airbus and Boeing forecast thousand frame markets in the VLA space and Airbus did gain ten orders each from Fedex and UPS for the proposed freighter.
Airbus saw a market of hub to hub or focus city to hub flying where a VLA would work well.
One airline built its operations around the A380 and trampled all of its competitors until the current crisis,
That the extant -800 version was built with greater structural weight and more wing than it needed to accomodate the anticipated freighter and -900 developments along with older generation engines did not help the program.
WRT airport mods, they would have made no sense at a place like MCO but were needed at airports like JFK, LAX and even LAS that saw multiple A380s each day,
We saw them in Ohio about as much as you would have in Florida, like never, but when connecting through or terminating in a large international airport, I can recall telling wife "wow, there's an A380 !" but then another couple of them would come.
Too bad the whole project didn't quite work out.
Not sure was it 777 or competition within the house in A330.
I don't think that the mid-nineties A330 had enough useful load or was capacious enough to obsolete the A340.
The 777 had more of both and the A340-500 and -600 programs proved to be expensive dead ends.
Yeah, 777 is bit larger than 330, but 330 proved to be bestseller same as 777. 340-500 and 600 were just inefficient. Plus, Airbus did not deliver even on promised fuel consumption with 346. The fact that Airbus can basically put bit of make up on 330, put new engines and find bunch of customers for 900 version, proves that this was jack pot for Airbus.
Originally Posted by edyvw
Originally Posted by fdcg27
Originally Posted by Mr Nice
Airbus was foolish to think an aircraft much bigger than a 747-400 would be very successful.
I wonder what was the demand for new 747s when the A380 was still on the 'drawing board' ?
Airports were foolish to spend big $$$ money to remodel for the A380. I knew when UPS and FedEx had no interest in this aircraft..... the A380 would have a short career with passenger airlines.
By the time AIrbus committed to the A380 Boeing had already replaced the 747 with its own 777.
The Airbus answer to the 747 was the A340 which the 777 killed in the market.
Both Airbus and Boeing forecast thousand frame markets in the VLA space and Airbus did gain ten orders each from Fedex and UPS for the proposed freighter.
Airbus saw a market of hub to hub or focus city to hub flying where a VLA would work well.
One airline built its operations around the A380 and trampled all of its competitors until the current crisis,
That the extant -800 version was built with greater structural weight and more wing than it needed to accomodate the anticipated freighter and -900 developments along with older generation engines did not help the program.
WRT airport mods, they would have made no sense at a place like MCO but were needed at airports like JFK, LAX and even LAS that saw multiple A380s each day,
We saw them in Ohio about as much as you would have in Florida, like never, but when connecting through or terminating in a large international airport, I can recall telling wife "wow, there's an A380 !" but then another couple of them would come.
Too bad the whole project didn't quite work out.
Not sure was it 777 or competition within the house in A330.
I don't think that the mid-nineties A330 had enough useful load or was capacious enough to obsolete the A340.
The 777 had more of both and the A340-500 and -600 programs proved to be expensive dead ends.
Yeah, 777 is bit larger than 330, but 330 proved to be bestseller same as 777. 340-500 and 600 were just inefficient. Plus, Airbus did not deliver even on promised fuel consumption with 346. The fact that Airbus can basically put bit of make up on 330, put new engines and find bunch of customers for 900 version, proves that this was jack pot for Airbus.