Sunday, February 17, 2019

Airbus Announces The End of the A380

On Thursday, Valentines day, Airbus confirmed the production of the A380 double-decker jumbo jet will end when currently booked sales are delivered.  That's currently scheduled for 2021.  The main problem the aircraft had was that it didn't fit in existing airports, so any airline wanting to fly the aircraft had to fly to a few specific places.  The infrastructure problem also meant that getting self-loading cargo on and off could take longer than it might have.  To get into other airports would require paying for the construction work.

Jonathan M. Gitlin, writing at Ars Technica adds:
Unlike the 747, it doesn't appear set to have a continued career carrying cargo, either. You'd expect the biggest passenger plane of the skies to make a pretty decent freighter. But there's no folding nose variant, so you can't take full advantage of its commodious interior to carry really big stuff.
While the aircraft never seemed to capture the public attention the Boeing 747 did, it was a masterful engineering job.  When I saw my first 747, I'm sure my reaction was typical: "it'll never fly"; I'm sure most people's reactions to the A380 were the same.  It's always awe-inspiring to see these marvels of engineering take off and land as gracefully as they do.  Few outside the industry know that even with its massive size, the A380 had to be tested to ensure it could be evacuated by a plane full of passengers, who needed to be untrained volunteers (with a defined mix of females to males and ages over 50 to under 50) in less than 90 seconds.  853 passengers and 20 crew disembarked in the dark in 78 seconds, with half of the plane's exits arbitrarily blocked.  (I've commented on this before)

What probably caught most peoples' attention is the opulence in the first class and business class areas of the aircraft.
Flying long-distance in an A380 can be an opulent affair. Both Singapore Airlines and Emirates have private first class suites on board, and the flying bar—first seen on the original jumbo jet—has made something of a comeback, too. The promo shots have a certain air of "crew quarters on NCC-1701D," although you'll see from the gallery (or on YouTube) that they're a little smaller than that. Further aft things are more spartan, and pick the upper deck because the 2-4-2 layout is less cramped than downstairs' 3-4-3.

I've only been fortunate enough to fly an A380 once (of late 747s appear to be the preferred type for Dulles to Heathrow). But that one trip made me fall for the big plastic bird. It was a quiet and smooth ride, and the bathrooms at the front of the upper deck were bigger than the bathrooms of some houses I've lived in. Here's to you, you majestic flying cruise liner.
I've never flown one of these "carbon composite skywhales" as Gitlin calls them.  I've never been closer than seeing one out of window in the airport or from another plane.  A friend I worked with told me about working on the HF Radio antenna on the vertical stabilizer and being so wrapped up in his task he was blind to where he was.  When the job was done and he stood up to get his tools together, looked around himself, and was suddenly shocked at how big the airplane was; at how far away the wingtips were.  I know, however, that every A380 contains radios on which I was on the design team, and I enjoy knowing that. 


Workers at Airbus in Hamburg, Germany working on two of the three floors in the aircraft.  Getty Images, Jason Alden photo from a nice photo spread on Ars Technica


10 comments:

  1. It's one of the few commercial passenger aircraft that I haven't flown on.

    My favorite is still the 787 Dreamliner. It's a very nice ride. There is one scheduled from Tijuana to Mexico City on Aero Mexico (the Great Pinada in the Sky) at 9am daily. When I fly to Mexico City I take extra effort to try and book a first class seat.

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    1. When we were working on the 787 I used to tease the Director of Engineering to ask Boeing to fly one here and park it at the airport so we could go look at our stuff. They have to fly thousands upon thousands of miles to qualify the airframe, so what's one additional airport? More likely just a different airport and not additional.

      It would have been cool to see our work - let us look in the avionics bays. Don't have to fly us anywhere just let us crawl around the airplane.

      But nooOOOoooo.

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    2. You meant they wouldn't even fly it into Mickeyville? That seems foolish for an airliner which will surely be doing much work to and from there...

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    3. I know, right? Chances are the suggestion never went beyond our Director, but for all the talk of being "partners" on the project Boeing never thought of that. I think it would have been very cool for hardware and software folks to see everything we were working on in the plane, and it would have been even cooler for the folks on the assembly line. Heck, do it on a Saturday so we do it on our own time. If they had a "come see inside the 787" event on a weekend, I'd have been there as fast as humanly possible.

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    4. I suspect you are right about the Director not bothering to follow through on the request. Might have gotten better results if you had made contact with one of your opposites at Boeing.

      That's sort of what the lead engineer did when we were working on redesigning a CO2 surgical laser. We wanted to see one in use, once we got it into production. He talked to a local surgical hospital about us viewing a surgery, and got the okay from a surgeon to suit up and watch.

      I've got the proof-of-concept articulated 7 joint arm with my Permalign(TM) System as a rather large paperweight. ~30 years ago, now.

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  2. I've never even seen one, SiG. I know they didn't fly into LGB, and if they flew into LAX, they'd just be "landing lights in the sky" from long Beach.

    I've walked through a C-5 Galaxy a few times at air shows, and was lucky enough to have helped unload a satellite from an Antonov that came into Long Beach. Those were the biggest I've been around other than 747's.

    I remember when the A380 first came out, and wondered about the airplane fitting into the existing infrastructure. Looks like it didn't.....

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  3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GNF7ijKtKE

    Note that doesn't include the latest "crank" aircraft...

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  4. I'm not surprised it will end; industry people had said years ago that it was a solution in search of a problem - a very large aircraft at the time that existing large aircraft (i.e. 747) were getting retired in large numbers. Either aircraft really only makes sense on popular, long, routes - which explains why Qatar is so found of them, but few others.
    With the 777, A350X, etc, most long routes can be economically flown more often, giving passengers the choice of departure times that they like. Those aircraft can also do more direct flights on routes that don't have the volume to justify the 747 or A380.
    Did you know that when the 747 was being designed, it was assumed that the SST would be carrying passengers soon, so the passenger 747's (at least initially, and maybe always) were all laid out to be easily converted to cargo? That was one reason for the second deck - to allow nose loading like with the C-5.

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  5. It isn't just the runways...

    I have been in airports when a 747 landed at one of the smaller regional airports. It isn't pretty.

    Bathrooms have lines forever. There are no rental cars. And the passengers waiting to get on the next flight out... no where to sit.

    But then I hate flying. It was never fun, but since they instituted security theater, it has become miserable.

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