Sounds like a snarky comment taken from an Airbus-bashing aviation website. Some that I drop in on are quite vicious. Airline people are not a happy group these days.

While the A380 may be overblown as the 'savior' of Airbus, it certainly is flying just fine, and will probably be a mainstay for some time, once the bugs are worked out.

Jim - in earlier posts on this plane the point was that who would want to fly in one given that it holds a ridiculous number of passengers (600?800?). You'd need to be on a transatlantic flight in order for there to be enough time for the attendents to bring you your soda and peanuts. And who knows how long to embark/disembark, get your luggage, etc.

You will never ride on an A380 unless you are going on the hadj. Remember, there will be no cocktail service on those flights, and no stewaress in mini-skirts, but there will be plenty of barbecued goat, cooked right in front of you, and the flight attendants will be carrying AK47s and wearing wraparound shades.

It'll probably fly just fine so long as the control surfaces don't delaminate. Problem with it is it's too big, and likely won't be full enough on most routes to pay for itself.

Let us avoid snarkiness as a matter of course. It feels good but accomplishes little.

I would like actually to fly on one just to check it out, prefarably one without all 800 seats. But let us keep a cold rational eye on this.

It really smacks of Soviet gigantism, that is, building it so they can say "WE'RE THE BIGGEST.... unlike those pathetic Americans", etc. But will it fly economically?

Someone painted a picture imagining eight of these, flown by United, at O'Hare. Now imagine the gates. "Here's your ticket, sir, gate B-17. B-1 is right over there." Great. That's a mile and a half.

I'm thinking Boeing might have been wise to give air-gigantism a wide berth, so to speak.

I'll wait a few years and see if it crashes before considering it. Of course, I said the same thing about the Concorde, and a few years stretched into 20 and I still didn't desire to ride one.

Boeing cleverly suckered Airbus into committing to build this plane, and were delighted when they did. It's a commercial disaster.

It's only because the EU has just made it clear that they will give Airbus both the money they needed to build this and the money they now need to build a copy of Boeing's new plane that the US is referring the airline subsidy issue to the WTO.

I just watched "The Aviator." It could be that the A380 will turn out to be Aribus's Spruce Goose.

"Let us avoid snarkiness as a matter of course. It feels good but accomplishes little."

Then why are posting here?

And the Euro's say that Americans are fat. That fat A380 has NO SOUL. I like to look at the sexy 747-400's or the sleek, but aggressive 757. America gave us those two birds, and Jazz music and baseball and New York City and New Orleans. What the hell has Europe done in the last 150 years? They gave us the Airbus A380. Yuck!

"I would like actually to fly on one just to check it out, prefarably one without all 800 seats. But let us keep a cold rational eye on this."

No seats on those Hadj specials. Squating room only.

Back in the early days of the 747, the U.S. airlines weren't sure they could fill the planes to capacity -- American Airlines went as far as putting a piano bar in the rear section of some of their jets, though the oil price spike in 1973 following the OPEC embargo made that impractical due to the cost to fly the plane.

The A-380 faces the same problems, though like the 747 the time may come where it can fill all the available seats on a flight. But for domestic U.S. travel, it's hard to see how any airports outside of the Big 5 (JFK, LAX, D-FW, O'Haire and Hartsfield) can draw enough passengers who want to fly to the same place at the same time to justify purchasing the beheamoths.

Um, isn't a large percentage (50%?) of the A380 subcontracted out to US companies?

So the right wing will stay attached?

Plenty of people trust their lives on the A-320, a very nice flying airplane.

The autoflight system can be a psycho-bi**h from h**l, though.

Dumb idea for many of the reasons mentioned above. The Edsel of the airframes.

Bin Laden will be disappointed about the delay.