“Combining the most advanced aviation technology and an inspired cabin design, Airbus is proud to have created an aircraft that is celebrated for its outstanding quality in every aspect. Leading the industry in standards for innovation, experience and efficiency, it is adored by passengers, pilots and crew alike.”
– Airbus.com, ‘More than an Airplane’, A380 product page
As inevitable as it was, it was surreal to hear the news about the Airbus A380 program officially entering palliative care, with the last one leaving its Toulouse factory in 2021. This was a plane I’d grown up with. In fact, the A380 was born in 1988, a year before me. To treat his plane-obsessed kid, my father bought me this big book of airliners, past, present and future, and in it featured multiple massive airliners of the future: never-realised stretch versions of the Boeing 747, the never-realised double decker McDonnell Douglas MD-12, and the Airbus A3XX.
Against all odds, the A380 came to life in the form of a 550+ passenger, 239 foot long, 79 foot tall giant that could easily fly from Dubai to Sydney non-stop. It was a remarkable aircraft with a bunch of engineering marvels within engineering marvels. Even the 3000-foot waste and water piping system was impressive.
In 2006, I woke up at 4am to catch the first train to Sydney Harbour to see the plane I’d read so much about do its first fly-by in Australia. And in 2007, I was one of the first passengers ever to fly on the A380, on Singapore Airlines’ Sydney to Singapore flight. Since then I’ve flown on A380s belonging to Emirates, Qatar Airways, and Asiana Airways. I’ve had a drink or two on upper deck loungers, had my own bathroom in first class on a particularly empty Sydney to Doha Qatar Airways flight, and sat sandwiched between two others in economy on a packed Emirates flight from Dubai to Sydney. In short, we have history, the A380 and I.
What do I along with 190 million other passengers love about the A380?
Whether you’re taking a shower as an Emirates’ first class passenger, spooning your significant other in Singapore Airlines’ Suites, can spare $27k Etihad’s 3-suite ‘The Residence’, or simply flying in economy class, the A380 is more comfortable than most airlines. Its ultra-quiet take-offs boggle the mind. It’s a unique experience flying on the world’s largest commercial plane.
As Airbus say on their website, the plane is “adored by passengers, pilots and crew alike.” But the A380 hasn’t been as loved by the airlines who buy them. As I read about the decisions made and not made by Airbus, I am amazed at how such huge decisions that have impacts on thousands of jobs were made on what seem like a bunch of gambles, padded out by market research and reactivity to competition without thinking things through in a rational way.
The writing was on the wall even before the first flight
Despite multiple analyses (including ‘The A380 debate’ by Morgan Stanley) Airbus decided to go ahead and borrow $7.3 billion from the UK, Germany and France, eventually reaching development costs of $20 something billion dollars. In fact, industry experts wonder whether Airbus has ever sold an A380 for more than the cost it took to build it.
Why did they go ahead with the project, even after their biggest competitor Boeing, way back in 1995, decided not to go ahead with their own new version of a massive quad-engined plane following research even Airbus itself contributed to? Perhaps ego might have something to do with it. In fact, former COO of Airbus Tom Williams said “The days when we did some projects for ego, valour or pride are gone.” He retired at the end of last year.
Airbus starts with predictions, Boeing starts with evidence
While Boeing starts a project based on evidence of traffic, Airbus starts with predictions of future traffic. Airbus saw a future of overcrowded airports and limited landing slots. Boeing saw an increase in air traffic but fewer traffic jams in busy hub airports and more flights flying directly from ‘point-to-point’.
Boeing had its decades-old Boeing 747 and held a monopoly with it until the first commercial flight of the A380, so it seems understandable that Airbus would have known full well that it was taking a massive risk for potentially massive reward. Nevertheless, I wonder how many consultants and analysts gave Airbus decision makers insights they wanted to hear rather than the unvarnished truth.
Only a handful of airports are truly overcrowded
Back in 2006 (in ‘The A380 Debate’), Morgan Stanley noted that only 5 to 8 airports, at best, were truly facing capacity constraints that made the bulk of the business case for the A380, so about 50 to 60 city pairs would need the A380. There are 20,000 city pairs that planes currently service. So the key message Airbus’ salesforce could use was basically to tap into a market involving just 100-120 flight routes. You do the math.
On the other hand, Boeing’s big gamble, the Boeing 787, was betting on its diametrically opposed key message that passengers of the future would prefer point-to-point flights. In this case, a large aircraft like A380 wouldn’t be needed as much as a smaller, twin engined plane capable of flying say Perth to London as in Qantas’ case or Doha to Zurich as in Qatar’s case. The plane would be economical as it would be easier to fill up. Ticket sales agents around the world sighed in relief as Boeing’s point-to-point predictions came true over Airbus’s superhub predictions.
Let’s assume Airbus’s vision of the future came true. Even then, the A380 doesn’t make much economic sense. Thanks to technology improvements, there are twin-engined aircraft like the Boeing 777 that carry almost as many passengers as a four-engined 747s or A380s at a lower cost.
Sales didn’t follow marketing
With the key marketing message of being able to carry more passengers per flight to airports that don’t have any more landing slots no longer valid, what were Airbus sales teams supposed to do?
Perhaps they could have restarted talk of the opulence an A380 provides passengers, like the gyms and casinos and beauty parlours Richard Branson promised its flyers on Virgin’s A380s? Not really. Virgin’s A380 orders were swapped for smaller A350s, minus the gyms and casinos and beauty parlours. The only airline that features never-before-seen luxury in a scalable way is Emirates with their on-board showers. Etihad has its 3-bedroom Residence, but I’d love to see know much money they make with it, and highly doubt they do. Most airlines opt for an onboard lounge and bar, which is fantastic, but not a game changer.
It can’t convert into a freighter (unlike the 747)
The Boeing 747 had a lifeline, and that was the passenger-to-freighter conversion program (cancelled in 2016) which turns a former passenger-liner into a cargo carrying beast. The A380 can’t be converted and isn’t economically viable to do so, because it has an unremovable main deck and a nose section that can’t be modified (to fit unusually large loads) and has higher trip costs than the 747.
It depended on one customer: Emirates
Emirates is the single largest customer of the A380 thanks to its business model and belief in the hub-and-spoke approach where an A380 full of passengers from Sydney to get off at Dubai Airport and part ways to dozens of onwards journeys in different directions. The model works amazingly well for them. But Emirates is one of the few international airlines able to scale its large widebody aircraft fleet in that way. So for Airbus, that means overdependence on one customer.
As I’ve learned from personal experience relying on one client to pay my invoices, that isn’t a sustainable solution. Plans change, bills don’t get paid on time, the client seeks a new supplier. Depending on one client would induce anxiety in any freelancer or business, let alone a company who sells planes that cost over $400 million each.
Emirates, which talked about the crucial role the A380 places on its business model, swapped its final batch of orders to smaller Airbus A330s and Airbus A350s. I guess things change 🤷🏾♂️.
I’ll probably be able to keep flying on A380s well into my 40s as airlines will keep their newest A380s into the 2030s. Nevertheless, for totally sentimental reasons, I’ll miss the uneconomical, ridiculously underselling engineering marvel that was painfully birthed over a 15+ year period. And sadly, I have to congratulate Airbus for letting go of sentiment in their decision to kill the A380.
To those non-aviation geek folks reading this who are curious, the upcoming Boeing 777X will most likely fill the void the A380 leaves behind.
Airlines that fly the A380
- Singapore Airlines
- Emirates
- Qantas
- Air France
- Lufthansa
- Korean Air
- China Southern Airlines
- Malaysia Airlines
- Thai Airways
- British Airways
- Asiana Airlines
- Qatar Airways
- Etihad
- HiFly
Personal favourite A380 flights
Qatar Airways, first class from Sydney to Doha in 2017 after spending a bunch of frequent flyer miles. I had half the cabin to myself and saw the only other passenger in first at the start and end of our flight, and not a single time during the 14 hour journey. And yes, I took a selfie in my bathroom.
My second favourite was a production trip from Seoul to New York where I got to explore basically every inch of a new Asiana Airlines A380 while capturing content for a digital campaign I worked on for the airline. Visiting the crew rest area underneath the main deck was a super geeky highlight for me.
Resources
Airbus official profile of the A380
The Economist article on the demise of A380
Bloomberg analysis on Emirates’ cancellation of A380 orders
Aviation geeks like myself venting on Airlines.net
The Guardian’s piece on how passengers loved A380 but airlines didn’t
Watch this documentary on the engineering brilliance of the A380 by Richard Hammond.
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