![]() ![]() The A380 program can be traced back as far as the late 1980s or early 1990s, depending on how you count. It takes many years for a new airplane design to go from a glimmer in a designer’s eye to sitting at gate B37, waiting to haul you off to London or Hong Kong or wherever. There was a time when the A380 made sense - or at least, there was a viable argument for building it. “Airlines didn’t want to take the risk of selling 600 seats, and at the end only 60% of the seats are sold.” ![]() It’s much easier if you, for example, sell tickets for a 787 with capacity of, say, 200 passengers,” says Bijan Vasigh, professor of economics and finance at Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University. “Filling up 600 passengers is relatively difficult for an airline. With the A380, having that many seats can get you in serious trouble if you can’t find enough butts. That’s why airlines sometimes offer crazy discounts - getting something is better than getting nothing. The more unfilled seats on any single flight, the more an airline can lose. The aviation industry is about “putting butts in seats,” as the saying goes. Those numbers are impressive on paper, but troublesome from a business perspective. Then there’s the sheer passenger capacity of the beastly aircraft, which could fit anywhere from around 550 passengers to upwards of a mind-boggling 800, depending on the configuration. A four-engine superjumbo in what’s become a twin-engine world, the A380 is expensive for airlines to fuel and maintain. The A380 is an engineering marvel and widely beloved by passengers. And now there’s the A380, currently the world’s largest airliner, which maker Airbus announced Thursday is being retired after just 12 years in commercial service. There’s the Concorde, among the fastest passenger airliners to ever fly, which succumbed to high operating costs and noise rules spurred by its deafening supersonic boom. There’s Howard Hughes’ “Spruce Goose,” then the largest plane ever built and designed as a military hauler, which flew just once (a very generous definition of “flew”), but arrived too late for its intended role in World War II. ![]() Let’s return to Boeing to take a look at one of their 747 successors.The aviation graveyard is littered with superlative aircraft that didn’t stay in the air for long. This plane has a 159,000-liter fuel capacity to manage that kind of power. Each engine produces 97,000-pounds of thrust at takeoff. ![]() This craft also features the most powerful engines ever equipped to an Airbus passenger craft. With a maximum takeoff weight of 319-tonnes, this aircraft still manages to put out a maximum range of 16,100-kilometers. This aircraft can seat anywhere from 350 to 410 passengers even while including a quiet cabin and wider seats than other aircraft. This aircraft comes in at nearly 243-feet in length. The A350-1000 is their longest-fuselage version of their A350 line. Airbus A350-1000 aircraft taking off the ground – by Paul Thompson (CC BY-ND 2.0) It’s no surprise to see another Airbus aircraft making the list as the company has been innovating new ways to achieve staggering size in flight. There are plenty of different ways to measure “biggest” when it comes to aircraft. So it made sense for the company to shut down the production for economic reasons as it’s losing money on each A380 they sell. It’s true that the plane is very expensive, but that price tag is not even enough to cover the production cost, let alone cover the research and development cost of the program (estimated to $25 billion). Nearly 15 years after this aircraft took its first flight, the last Airbus A380 order will be assembled for 2021 (17 planes for Emirates and All Nippon Airways) and then the production will stop. You’re spending a lot of money for a whole lot of plane when you get your hands on an A380.īut as all good things come to end, this plane will no longer be produced: With such size, each Airbus A380 costs a mind blowing 445.6-million dollars which makes it the most expensive passenger aircraft. This aircraft has an astounding 261-foot wingspan and comes in at nearly 80-feet tall. The Airbus A380-800 (here from the Qatar airline fleet) is the largest plane in the world The Airbus A380-800 is the biggest passenger plane in the world offering 575 seats in a typical configuration and up to 853 seats for a maximum passenger capacity. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |