Airbus 380

I want to thank the contributors to this thread. I really find this fascinating and yet I don't know why.

Quote: Pacomartin

Well, i was giving you an average of 42 empty seats out of 150 (50 of which are middle seats). You expect wide variation over the average.

Oh, absolutely. I mentioned it because when presented with "average" many people think "usual" or "commonly."

Quote:

Still, most airlines would sell those seats one way or the other as there is almost no additional cost with filling them (maybe some fuel), and it is lost revenue.

Interjet seems to be doing well. I guess it doesn't cost them that much, or maybe they build brand loyalty that way?

A few years back the price difference between Interjet or Volaris and Aeromexico was big. So big that corporate policy at my job was to avoid travel via Aeromexico. Now the difference is smaller, in many cases trivial (it varies because Aeromexico has differential pricing on their flights). But the corporate policy still is to avoid Aeromexico.

Quote: Pacomartin

One thing seems certain, the business of air travel has barely expanded since 2000 (especially compared to deregulation in 1978 to 2000). Either you can say demand is low, or airlines have preferred to keep prices high enough to increase profits without carrying more passengers.

I think several things have changed. Air travel was something "rich people" did before the early 1980s, and even to the late 1980s many people still traveled by car for price. The 1990s were the boom times. Everyone it seemed hoped a plane to go on vacation, and at the same time this was the era of the "Road Warrior" businessman.

The attacks of 9/11 changed it all. Some people got scared away. Others like me look at the hassle and avoid the whole thing. Bankrupt carriers have made airline employment less a choice job. Nickel and diming the customer to death. Even after back to "normal" I swear half the TSA agents are unqualified, jag-offs, or both. I got flagged for toenail clippers once, days after it was in the WSJ that they were allowed with a short blade. "IT COULD HAPPEN AGAIN" was the reply I got from the woman at security. Another time I go to show the guy how to unlatch the bag and was told, "you can't touch it!" A latch? Serious?

I might hit Vegas late spring, but only because I have a free flight, possible room deal, and the Riviera is going soon. I cringe at the idea of flying now, even if JBLU makes it tolerable.

Quote: DRich

I want to thank the contributors to this thread. I really find this fascinating and yet I don't know why.

I have always thought about the idea of a projects success or failure. The concorde was a success in a way, because it produced a limited rate production of one of the world's most amazing commercial aircraft. It was a failure because it cost a fortune in R&D but never went into full production.

The SST project rightly figured that a transcontinental aircraft would not be feasible unless it had bigger capacity. So was it a success since it didn't even produce a prototype.

So what about the A318, the ultimate steep ascent aircraft. That was also a failure.

And of course the A380. It's a difficult decision, but will a stretch A380 work? With travel picking up, will there develop a market. Business conditions seem to change very rapidly in China.

A Spanish designer wants to add a third deck, and split customers into three classes (one to a deck) He also wants to retain the steep ascent.

Quote: Pacomartin

I have always thought about the idea of a projects success or failure. The concorde was a success in a way, because it produced a limited rate production of one of the world's most amazing commercial aircraft. It was a failure because it cost a fortune in R&D but never went into full production.

Cheap gas, that 0.9 tax fund and the Freeway system lead to a See the USA in A Chevrolet, America's the Greatest Land of All boom in travel, motels, hotels, resorts. So how does one analyze the success of failure of the decision to build highways?

Darn few travel by Interstate Buses anymore. The only successful bus company I've ever heard of started as a church in the sixties and morphed into The Green Turtle, an international bus and resort real estate company. So did they fail at having an old school bus being a church in which the company skimmed the cream by going from NYC's East Village to San Francisco's Haight Ashbury in competition with the two majors that probably don't exist anymore.

Consider the oft used defense spending ratio: The Lowest Bidder gets 80 percent of the work, the Next Lowest Bidder gets 20 percent of the work. That way there are TWO sets of jigs, TWO production lines, TWO sets of trained engineers and technicians. It supports the general industry and it provides an ever present capability of going to full scale wartime production. So don't think that the Concorde was necessarily a failure, nor was the Comet, nor any other plane. The failures are multi-factorial and so are the successes. Its clear that any fixed myopia in the business world will be punished in the market place. Travel to Red China in the fifties? You must be mad. Travel to sleepy little hot humid Macau? Heck, they flew the cast there for establishment and background shots, they didn't film the whole darn movie there. Who would want to be in Macau that long?

Now the emphasis is on short haul quiet mid altitude flights as well as on long haul high altitude high passenger loads but people gripe more about the security screening (theater that it is) than the flights themselves. Despite all the internet conferencing, business is still done face to face, peons are used build the Dubai Torch, Indian diplomats pay a nominal US minimum wage to their maids but actually adhere to the laws and customs of India's slavery for pennies, wage slaves harvest cocoa, diamonds that don't go thru the DeBeer's Cartel and declared tainted. We do have contradictory business principles at play, but no one knows aeronautical engineering expertise will play out in the real world of competition. China has had to give travel lessons to its elite governmental thieves who go abroad and offend others by having children defecate in airplane aisles instead of the dirty lavatory or have boys pee into a glass at a restaurant instead of a lavatory urinal. Yet China and Japan will play major roles in air travel in the coming decades.

Successful airplanes? The Piper Cub, The Cessna Caravan, The Boeing707.... the pilots love them.
Successful airlines? Look at what happened to the best: Qantas. Went from Pilots are God attitude to Pilots are Burger Flippers attitude. Look at India's domestic low cost carriers: one pilot tried to land on the nosewheel, not knowing that planes flare at the last minute and land on the main landing gear. Despite all the training and flying time in her log book it turned out to be her very first flight in an airplane.

Quote: Fleastiff

Look at India's domestic low cost carriers: one pilot tried to land on the nosewheel, not knowing that planes flare at the last minute and land on the main landing gear. Despite all the training and flying time in her log book it turned out to be her very first flight in an airplane.

That is unbelievable. Do you have any links for that? It is fascinating that it could happen.

If you want to read about what may (or may not) be acually going on in the worldwide airline industry, check out pprune.org

Quote: DRich

That is unbelievable. Do you have any links for that? It is fascinating that it could happen.

Some American pilots will not be scheduled even as passengers on various Indian Airlines.

You want an Aeronautical Degree in India...on exam day you write your cell phone number on the exam paper, you get a call "Pay your exam fee to My Cousin Vinnie" you then return to the bulletin board to see your score on the exam. This is NOT illegal, it is only illegal under Indian law if the money goes DIRECTLY to the exam grader.

One man had six months flying experience, taking off at the exact same time and landing at the exact same time every day. He never had a delay? He never had an early clearance? He never had to deviate around weather? One suspicious person took a look at the plane's performance charts and figured out that every day for six months the log book showed the plane had been flown at twenty percent beyond its maximum capable speed. As you can plainly see, that was one skillful pilot!

One warning about pprune ... not all are pilots and not all have the same expectations. Some know what it means to be a burger flipper wearing Captain's bars and some don't. Some understand the "go thru channels" or "take a bottle of Scotch to the supply sergeant" . Some understand training to the Max and some understand training to the Minimums. Ever hear a Japanese airline pilot who is taxiing with fuel spewing from his wing (as in a real flood of it not some puny little leak) and the jerk asks to taxi back to the ramp and unload his passengers near the terminal and all those other planes full of passengers and fuel? Ever hear a Japanese airline pilot upon being asked by Chief of Fire Command if his passengers are set and having full knowledge of how to set switches asks how do you set a passenger? Ever hear confusion on the frequency when a controller uses the term "water tank" instead of "water tower". One is "approved aviation speak" one is not.

Its said that you can board one flight a day for 26 years before you are likely to have an accident, and even then you are likely to survive. But its much shorter time to have dozens of close calls. Ask the fellow crew members of the woman pilot who tried to land on the nosewheel before they took the plane away from her and landed it themselves: their documents were largely forged too.

Quote: DRich

That is unbelievable. Do you have any links for that? It is fascinating that it could happen.

It seems I've mind-melded two separate incidents. Here is one of them. I'll look for the other.

http://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-442737.html


Found the other one too:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Two-more-pilots-land-in-trouble-for-fake-licences/articleshow/7658947.cms


ON EDIT: Don't be alarmed that it is largely female Indian pilots being exposed with false credentials and mythical log book hours. That is Indian Culture. They don't sacrifice the males with faked documents because if he berates female pilots he is a "good guy" even if he too has BIC hours in his logboog instead of PIC hours. (A pen manufacturer versus Pilot in Command).

Delta's rejection of the Airbus 380 does not mean that the airline is rejecting Airbus. In order to replace it's B747's in two years, and many of it's B767's they have put in an all Airbus widebody order for 50 airframes .

They ordered 25 of Airbus’s A350-900 planes, an all-new model, to replace the 13 Boeing 747s and 25 of the updated A330neo to replace the 767-300ERs. The focus in the Pacific is shifting from Tokyo to Beijing and Shanghai.

Delta is investing heavily in Aeromexico, whose widebody fleet is updating with the Dreamliner. Aeromexico is flying to both Tokyo and Shanghai in the Pacific. I believe that these two routes are the only nonstops between all of Latin America and Asia.

Delta could be all Airbus in a decade (for widebodies)
95 B767 average 18.7 years old
18 B777 average 10.0 years old

Delta is on the books as having made a firm order for 18 Dreamliners in 2005, but I don't think that means anything if they just ordered 50 Airbus widebodies.