July 16, 2004
I BEEN DONE SEEN 'BOUT EVERYTHING, WHEN I SEEN A WHITE ELEPHANT FLY (via Robert Schwartz)
Airbus's `Big Baby,' the A380, Fights Weight Problem (Bloomberg, 7/16/04)
Lifting a curtain at a new Airbus SAS factory
outside Toulouse, France, in May, Chief Executive Noel Forgeard unveiled
a two-story aircraft with an 80-meter (261-foot) wingspan: ``our big
baby,'' he told his 4,000 guests.It's bigger than the parent expected. Six months before flight tests and
a year before its first scheduled public flight in June 2005, the A380
is still overweight by as much as 4 metric tons, says Tim Clark,
president of its biggest customer, Emirates, the Middle East's biggest
carrier. [...]"Because this plane has been sold on an efficiency basis, the impact of
being overweight may be more significant for the success of the program
than on other planes,'' says Jack Hansman, professor of aeronautics and
astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
"Any extra weight is payload you're not carrying.'' [...]
Airbus can't deliver the efficiencies it has promised in range or
payload given its struggle to reduce the A380's weight, says Randy
Baseler, vice president of marketing for commercial airplanes at
Chicago-based Boeing. Boeing never found customers for proposed versions
of a larger 747 that would have carried as many as 516 passengers."If the plane's heavier, it consumes more fuel,'' says Baseler, 55.
"That drives up landing and navigation fees, and also maintenance
costs, especially for wheels, tires and brakes.''
Boy, it really is just like liberalism, a bloated inefficient mess, sustained only by government government power and wasted tax dollars. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 16, 2004 5:27 PM
They are trying to transform flying buses into flying cattle cars.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at July 16, 2004 6:58 PMMeanwhile, Boeing has wisely envisioned a future in which people want to fly point-to-point non-stop (for example, from Phoenix, AZ to Chongqing, China) and thus avoiding major hubs. (Also avoiding having to redesign and rebuild gates, as the A380 will require.) Boeing's strategy was never a secret (a Boeing executive casually described it to me on summer 2000 flight back from Asia when I asked him what he thought about the A380, then only known as the A300X). Airbus has bet "the company" on the A380. That Boeing exec. did not look the slightest bit worried about the A380 (he was REALLY worried about Al Gore winning the White House, on the other hand.)
Nevertheless, in the back of "le mind," Airbus knows it can rely on the taxpayers of Europe to avoid anything like bankruptcy. Think Chrysler, but only bigger.
Posted by: G. Gaudi at July 16, 2004 7:09 PMAnother problem that will be the nail in the coffin of this monster is the cost of the use of the airport Gate(s).
The logistics of loading 500+ passengers on two decks will dramatically increase the cost of either;
a) the time it takes to load (think Southwest's 15 minute gate turn around)
b) or dramatically increased use of new jet ways and/or the need to use two gates to load the passengers.
Posted by: BB at July 16, 2004 7:41 PMWhich means that no private airline can ever buy them, because it requires states to impose the widening, rebuilding, etc. on all the airports.
Posted by: oj at July 16, 2004 8:36 PM500 passengers. You are dreaming. Its 550 if the craft is configured only in business/first class. Dream on. Its 800 in a more normal configuration.
Just wait until the bean counters get ahold of one of these babies. Your fondest dreams come true. bodily intimacy with 30 people you have never meet before and will never see again.
Imagine the Jakarta Jeddah run at Rammadan. Hieronymus Bosch has nothing on you.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at July 16, 2004 10:02 PMSpeaking of Chrysler (see above) there was a little ripple about a month ago when Iacocca came out for Kerry. Given Chrysler only survived with massive government intervention this isn't surprising.
Posted by: AWW at July 16, 2004 11:03 PMToo heavy? Not a problem, make it out of balsa wood.
Posted by: Uncle Bill at July 17, 2004 9:37 AMRobert - The terrorists will have to up their per-plane allotment from 17 to 40.
Posted by: pj at July 17, 2004 10:08 AMBoeing tried on an 800-seat airliner a few years ago but the airlines said they didn't want it.
Before you gloat too much, though, Orrin, you ought to go read the financial history of the 737.
It was built for a market that did not then exist.
It finally turned into the most successful airliner in history, profitwise, but only after more examples had been made, at a loss, than any other airliner, too.
Yeah, the airlines just rake in the bucks--Pan Am, TWA, Braniff....
Posted by: oj at July 19, 2004 9:44 PM