Airbus 380

Quote: Nareed

About the Concorde much was blamed on the oil shocks after the Yom Kippur War, and the ban on supersonic travel over the US. Some accounts add the increasing importance of transpacific travel and the Concorde's limited range.

You can book a low rent inside cabin for two for $3K+$140 taxes on the Queen Mary 2, and leave NYC on Friday night and arrive in Southampton UK on friday morning. So that is about 17 fine meals, dancing, music, entertainment, etc.

Now two flexible tickets one way on British airways are $5K premium economy, $15.6K business class and $21K first class. Two people round trip flights are $1,747.26 on British airways with one week notice *but no flexibility and no refunds".

So even premium economy is more expensive than the low end voyage on the Queen Mary (the fastest ship of it's size in the world). Now the time expended is very different (7 hours vs almost 7 days).

But if people will pay that much more for a little pampering, it is difficult to see what reducing a trip from 7 hours to 3.5 hours is really worth. The Concorde tried to keep their prices the same as First Class subsonic. Other than people who are in for the experience, and the rare CEO who really has to take a meeting in NYC and be back in his bed in London that night, it is a hell of an expenditure per hour.

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Bottom line is most businessmen are going to pay to fly at night, try to sleep on the plane, and possibly pay for early check in at the hotel so they can shower before the morning meeting.

Quote: Pacomartin

But if people will pay that much more for a little pampering, it is difficult to see what reducing a trip from 7 hours to 3.5 hours is really worth.

London to Houston was ten hours. I assume London to Mexico is around 12. Reducing that to 5 and 6 respectively sounds great.

I don't know if Concorde had that range (it flew from MEX to JFK and thence to Paris), but a follow-on SST would have.

How long does it take to fly from NYC to Tokyo or Hong Kong? How about London to Seoul? All those flights could use higher speeds.

Oh, $3K for a week on a luxury liner sounds great. But that would be more like a vacation, or part of a long vacation. I can see sailing to London, spending the week there, then maybe flying to Paris or Rome, then Greece and maybe Turkey, then flying back. Say a 4-5 week vacation for when I hit the lottery ;)

Quote: DRich

I flew a leg on a TWA L-1011 from Las Vegas to Phoenix where I was the only passenger. In Phoenix the plane filled up for the next leg to New York.

I flew Atlanta to Orlando.

Believe it or not, that was the second shortest trip I ever took on a wide-body.

Quote: Nareed

Believe it or not, that was the second shortest trip I ever took on a wide-body.

A total of 352 nautical miles and it was your second shortest trip? Wow. I think the remaining B747's in US fleets only fly once a day except for short movements in keeping with rotations for maintenance.

They do that in Japan. As a matter of fact the tragic Japan Air #123 was on a trip of only 218 nautical miles, when it crashed with loss of 520 lives. It was a Boeing 747 single class configuration (August 1985). The failure mechanism was aggravated by flying such a large aircraft for 6 round trips a day for many years.



Diana Yukawa's father was on that flight (a month before she was born).

Quote: Pacomartin

A total of 352 nautical miles and it was your second shortest trip? Wow.

Yup.

Many years ago, 1980s I think, Mexicana had a few DC-10s they flew to Chicago. A trip we had to make to Monterrey for a funeral was in one of these, which stopped there on its way to Chicago. I'm assuming that trip was shorter.

If not the Atlanta to Orlando wins. But those are two short trips on wide-bodies.

There's a tie for third (or second??): Pan-Am and Air France, both Mex City to Houston, both on a B-747. Both were on their way elsewhere.

Quote: Pacomartin

I think the remaining B747's in US fleets only fly once a day except for short movements in keeping with rotations for maintenance.

They do that in Japan. As a matter of fact the tragic Japan Air #123 was on a trip of only 218 nautical miles, when it crashed with loss of 520 lives. It was a Boeing 747 single class configuration (August 1985). The failure mechanism was aggravated by flying such a large aircraft for 6 round trips a day for many years.

Military planes have a "mission profile". I think civilian planes have pretty much the same thing. An intended maintenance sensitivity, noise profile, speed of climb, speed of descent, range, icing speeds, etc.

The Concorde with its nose up/down, no booms allowed, limited range seemed unworkable when you got away from its Hyped Speed to its Average Speed it was allowed to fly.

All equipment has a concept of Duty Cycles. If six round trips a day for many years is "wrong" it had better be sold with that understanding. Are you referring to that one strip of welding versus two strips?

I think this one flight a day for the behemoths is going to be a major impetus to the smaller, agile business jets. Vacations or Conferences, people have preferences for times of fiight and duration. One Mega Flight per day is probably more due to airport congestion than desired use. And probably more attributable to Hub and Spoke than to Free Flight.

Quote: Nareed

If not the Atlanta to Orlando wins. But those are two short trips on wide-bodies.

There's a tie for third (or second??): Pan-Am and Air France, both Mex City to Houston, both on a B-747. Both were on their way elsewhere.

Mexico to Monterrey is 386 nautical miles, so it is a little bit longer than ATL-MCO. Mexico to Houston is 666 nautical miles (eerie). Still, that is 4 very short widebody trips.

One advantage to flying to Monterrey first before going to Shanghai is that you only need enough fuel to get to MTY. Then you can refuel and you don't have to take off with full payload from such a high altitude. On the return trip, of course, it doesn't matter.

Now that San Diego got their own nonstop to Tokyo, there is less incentive to go there first. But things may change when the airport bridge is constructed.

Quote: Pacomartin

Mexico to Monterrey is 386 nautical miles, so it is a little bit longer than ATL-MCO. Mexico to Houston is 666 nautical miles (eerie). Still, that is 4 very short widebody trips.

The Pan Am flight, I recall, was number 51. After Houston I think it went to JFK, then London. The Air France flight I assume went on to Paris. What's odd is not that it stopped at Houston, but that it was allowed to let off passengers from Mexico there (maybe they code-shared with Pan Am or Texas International?)

Quote: Fleastiff

All equipment has a concept of Duty Cycles. If six round trips a day for many years is "wrong" it had better be sold with that understanding. Are you referring to that one strip of welding versus two strips?

The repair to the tail section was done wrong. It is possible if it had been done that with a US duty cycle the repair would have failed after two decades. But the constant flying several times per day just made it happen much sooner in Japan.

But the 747 was never advertised as a plan you couldn't fly repeatedly, as no one wanted to preclude that mass movement market.

Quote: Fleastiff

I think this one flight a day for the behemoths is going to be a major impetus to the smaller, agile business jets. Vacations or Conferences, people have preferences for times of fiight and duration. One Mega Flight per day is probably more due to airport congestion than desired use. And probably more attributable to Hub and Spoke than to Free Flight.

The behemoths were never meant to be for one flight per day. Some airport pairs now have more than 30 round trips per day.There is already enough choices for times. I think when the A380 project began, they assumed that by now more airports would have landing restrictions at key times favoring the larger planes.

They may have been correct in America, but the twin disasters of 9-11 followed by the financial shutdown means that numbers of passengers are way down.

The problem is that the Japanese do fly high density flights. They pack out some B777 with 500 seats (over 90% of maximum allowable capacity). Not one single USA airline flies a widebody with anywhere near maximum capacity. Many fly narrowbody airframes that way (Spirit Airline is probably the most extreme).

So if landing restrictions begin in earnest in our most crowded airports (like Las Vegas and San Diego) and they begin charging fees by landings rather than by weight, the US airlines can outfit some high density planes from their present models.

While the USA airlines are buying a lot of Airbus narrowbodies, they still tend to favor Boeing when it comes to widebodies. But frankly the shock to Airbus was their inability to get A380 customers in China and Japan.

At the Paris Air Show in June 2011, Hong Kong Airlines had announced a signed contract for 10 Airbus A380's however due to China's anger with the European Union over plans to force all airlines to take part in its carbon-trading scheme, the Chinese government has blocked progress on Airbus’s sale of 10 A380s to Hong Kong Airlines. Normally, airlines in Hong Kong are not required to seek approval from the Chinese government to proceed with aircraft orders. The A380 cancellation became an issue as Hong Kong Airlines' parent, Hainan Airlines, is registered in mainland China, not Hong Kong SAR.

Japanese budget airline, Skymark ordered 6 A380's in 2010, but cancelled the order in July 2014.

On 28 January 2005 China Southern Airlines ordered 5 A380's which have been delivered, but that is the entire capacity of both countries.

In fact, East Asia was expected to be the area of the world that would buy the most A380's. In reality that region bought only 29 airframes with 4 more on order. (Airbus is also keeping the 10 jets held up at Hong Kong Airlines on the books. They can't afford the bad press of taking a single airframe off the books unless it is absolutely necessary).

10 KOREAN AIR ST KOREA, REPUBLIC OF
2 ASIANA AIRLINES SA KOREA, REPUBLIC OF 4 more on order
6 MALAYSIA AIRLINES 1W MALAYSIA
6 THAI AIRWAYS INTERNATIONAL SA THAILAND
5 CHINA SOUTHERN AIRLINES COMPANY ST CHINA