You're right if it was American carriers who are buying for doemstic rights. That's not the case. If I recall correctly, the customers are mostly Asian carriers
I see absolutely no reason why any domestic carrier would buy this thing. It's really more of a novelty than anything else, a la concorde. Take a look @ the Airbus site, the A380 has some interior/cockpit pics, pretty wild stuff. But as someone pointed out before, everytime I fly, it's on a smaller aircraft. I haven't seen a 747 at Hartsfield in a while, just a farkton of 737's and a few 777's.

192.168.24.152

That's what happens when you let the politicians design the manufacturing process.

It's the same with U.S. defense and airline contracts. When the Globemaster III is creating jobs in 30 states, do you think Congress is going to cut the program? And Boeing sources parts from all over the world in order to secure contracts, especially in Asia.

tiiger: But nothing compares to the 707-320I or the McDonnel Douglas, MD-11. Those plane have STYLE!

I got to fly in an MD-11 once, Portland to Seoul. It took off in 2/3 of the runway a 747 or A340 needs. Compared to other wide bodies (767s, 747s, A340s) it's much quieter. I'm sad the plane never sold well, it was wonderful to fly in.

With less planes to sell, they have to raise prices on each individual plane sold to cover prerequisite costs on development and engineering that do not scale per plane constructed.

Thank you, Drakkenmaw

FLYNAVY: Haven't seen any evacuation tests....853 passengers off in 90 seconds. Doubt we will see it in the US. RR engines, cool, with Mercedes as part owner.

They already did 873 in 80 seconds - a definite pass.

MithrandirBooga: Oh and I think it's funny that people denounce Airbus as socialist, when Boeing gets just as much Corporate Welfare from the USA as Airbus does from Europe.

This is simply not true... The last favor for Boeing - the leasing of tanker jets, has been tied up for years. You try telling the thousands of laid off Boeing employees that they really didn't lose their jobs.

Having to fly into LAX and trying to get my luggage along with 799 other people just does NOTHING for me. Can you imagine the crub crowd? That thing will NEVER fly into Southern California. Ever.

Yep, I've been saying this for years now. I'd shell out 20-30% more above standard econo-fare. Screw the 'fine dining' grub and even free booze and just give me the comfort and a few extra ammenities. Luckily, now that I'm back up to Platinum with Continental, I'm almost always upgraded to First Class, but having to buy the economy fares and HOPING for an upgrade that sometimes doesn't come sucks.

AA tryed this. It failed miserably.

Oops. That's tried.

Can you imagine the crub crowd? That thing will NEVER fly into Southern California.

Can you imagine how long it would take to get a damn drink??

if larger folks want cheap, comfy seats in aircrafts, someone needs to revive the airship industry.

/oh the huge manatee

Not that I wouldn't love to ride on this thing sometime, just when I'm not in a big hurry. Flew to the Bahamas for my honeymoon a couple months ago out of Hartsfield. I'm suprised the plane they put us on ran on fuel instead of rubber bands. It was the smallest rink-a-dink airliner I've ever been on.

MWeather

GavinTheAlmighty: Further justification for a soundproof cabin for crying babies!

Screw that, just stick them in the cargo bay.


Pure evil... Pure genius... When does you airline begin flying?

now thats a farkin plane

FLYNAVY
Haven't seen any evacuation tests....853 passengers off in 90 seconds.

The evacuation tests have been done:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4858484.stm

Oddly, the 380 is using evacuation slides made in the US (Mesa, AZ I believe) while Boeing is using French suppliers for their slides.

I forget how many slides they have, but they stick out all over from both levels.

And as to xpostal's concern, they will have specially designed gates that will board both levels, I think at two doors each. The cost of the gates alone, + the additional runway specs, means you won't see these flying in and out of Boise -- or any but the biggest long-haul hubs.

00shlomo00: I CALL TAIL GUN

FTFA: Airbus said the price of all its models - including the A380 - rose two weeks ago in a standard annual increase.

A STANDARD annual increase? What kind of business model survives by simply increasing the price annually for no particular reason?

/Oh, wait...

awachtel


Can you imagine the crub crowd? That thing will NEVER fly into Southern California.

Can you imagine how long it would take to get a damn drink??

I agree. Lets see how long it takes them to everybody TWO cocktails, then and ONLY then to they get certification.

Pooter

Businessmen, large folks, and those that value comfort would gladly shell out another 50-100 per ticket to avoid cramped-quarters and gain internet access for the trip.

Airline economics are pretty odd. As already discussed, there are companies doing something similar (like EOS, Maxjet) but the extra cost per ticket is more about $500-$1000 per seat.

The Continental 757 from Cleveland to London has, I believe, 16 first class seats. If 8 of those are filled, the flight to London *and back* is paid. Everything in coach is a bonus.

But if no first class seats are filled, you need to fill up like 80% of the coach class cabin to get the same effect of just filling up 8 first class seats. (That makes sense, about 10-12 coach class fares=1 first class fare, on an international flight. On a domestic it's probably 6-8 coach class to 1 first.)

Because of this, there will always be a huge price difference between economy, business and first. The differences between the cabins, in order to get passengers to justify the upgrade, have to be stark.

Gawd when I go too fast I screw up left and right.
(spell check is smoking)

awachtel: 00shlomo00: I CALL TAIL GUN

....I'm not giving you my dog...

I prefer the hydrocephalic-3000:

uhm didn't read whole thread. Is there anywhere this thing can even land yet?

I seen it reported the delays are due largely to wiring problems. Really not an issue when you're over an ocean or anything.

I agree. Lets see how long it takes them to everybody TWO cocktails, then and ONLY then to they get certification.
Agreed.

Sunday:Is there anywhere this thing can even land yet?
They landed it at Heathrow.

Smithers, I've designed a new plane. I call it the "Spruce Moose", and it will carry two hundred passengers from New York's Idyllwild Airport to the Belgian Congo in seventeen minutes!

Firefly4F4: A STANDARD annual increase? What kind of business model survives by simply increasing the price annually for no particular reason?

/Oh, wait...

Yeah, its not like the prices of things typically inflate annually. Don't these Frenchies understand economics at all?

I hope Southwest buys a bunch of these...

"Now seating groups A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J..."

This is just a bit of misplaced anti-european propaganda by the BEEB. The A380 is a huge step forwards, and thousands of Brits work on it, making the wings and huge turbofans that power it. Its also more efficient and longer ranging than any of its competitors. All in all, a magnificent machine. I can't wait to fly on it.

As for the price rise, its pretty much in line with inflation, and as for the delays, well, name a project of this size that didn't have delays. This is the business answer to the Concorde. Its prime design factor after safety is financial viability.

They flew it over Brunell's pioneering bridge in Bristol recently, and its on a par with that.

D

So....
If demand is high, prices go up
If demand is low, prices go up

Dammit, I should have picked Business as my major instead of one that actually helps people.

Damn.

Farking Magnificent:

Dave L: I assume British Airways will be buying a few of these? I would guess Virgin would, that's kinda their style.

P.S.: airliners.net has a bunch of pics of this thing.

Big Ol Jet Airliner.

Steve Miller unavailable for comment.

RocketRay: I got to fly in an MD-11 once, Portland to Seoul. It took off in 2/3 of the runway a 747 or A340 needs. Compared to other wide bodies (767s, 747s, A340s) it's much quieter. I'm sad the plane never sold well, it was wonderful to fly in.


I've flown on many of both, and I never noticed much difference between an MD-11 and a 747 except the MD-11 is smaller. It's biggest problem has always been the high profile crashes and grounding of the DC-10.

Airbus Scarebus the murdering company. They experiment and murder passengers with untested faulty product.

This goes to show you how evil Airbus is.

awachtel

P.S.: airliners.net has a bunch of pics of this thing.

That's it! You've triggered my airplane porn addiction. Another afternoon wasted...

HAH, You all know me to have ripped Scarebus airbus from time to time and now I am vindicated. I scream like William Wallace, FREEDOM. I KNEW IT. I am victorious. The murdering Scarebus company is on the chopping block! hah. All the murdered victims of airbus are getting revenge from the grave.

I knew the A380 sucks, I wrote to Singapore Airlines and swore never to solicit them again for buying the A380! I said, its got 4 engines, and a 777 has 2, cheaper. 777 Worldliner is the farthest flying, the 777 is cheaper to maintain, more reliable and isn't made from government funny money! Boeing had layoffs, Scarebus gets more from Chirac's teats.

777 rules baby, yeah! Noel FORGERYard looks like a gay Austin Powers too that slimy puke.

Scarebus are the worst planes. If it isn't a Boeing I'm not going.

Scarebus just had a front gear failure a few days back in LA.

Airbus has history of twisted landing gear
From Friday's Globe and Mail
Friday, September 23, 2005

Accounts of the dramatic landing of an Airbus jet in Los Angeles with its nose gear stuck and the wheels turned 90 degrees sideways focused almost exclusively on the fact that frightened passengers were able to watch their own plight on in-flight television newscasts. Virtually overlooked was that this kind of incident had happened on Airbus 320s at least four times before. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050923.wxplane23/BNStory/ International/

Airbus is a fraud.

Airbus demanded Thailand buy 6 A380 jets for Tsunami Aid.

Tsunami-hit Thais told: Buy six planes or face EU tariffs
FRASER NELSON
POLITICAL EDITOR

TSUNAMI-struck Thailand has been told by the European Commission that it must buy six A380 Airbus aircraft if it wants to escape the tariffs against its fishing industry.

While millions of Europeans are sending aid to Thailand to help its recovery, trade authorities in Brussels are demanding that Thai Airlines, its national carrier, pays £1.3 billion to buy its double-decker aircraft. http://business.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1288&id=66782005



Scarebus also told India if it did not buy 42 aircraft, it would veto India in the UN security council.

Relations with France have taken a nose-dive after Air India opted for fifty Boeings to augment its fleet discarding competition Airbus, and the country may back out of supporting India's bid for a permanent UN Security Council seat with veto powers.


Yesterday, French ambassador Dominique Girard was slammed by foreign secretary Shyam Saran for saying to the press that "We are surprised and disappointed. Airbus definitely has an advantage over Boeing...It is clear that some factors other than commercial have played a role.

Previously, Air India was going for a mix of Boeing and Airbus aircraft, but it became all Boeing after the UPA came to power and Praful Patel of the NCP became civil aviation minister, and Air India now plans to buy eight Boeing 777-200LRs, fifteen Boeing 777-300ER, and twenty-seven Boeing 787s, for nearly $7 billion.

Diplomats said that France found no play with the UPA, and efforts at raising bilateral relations to strategic level were blocked by foreign minister Natwar Singh, who peculiarly explained that India was cultivating ties with the European Union as a whole, which the French found "meaningless".

What galled them, according to diplomats, was a feeling that India did not adequately reciprocate France's declared friendship by being among the Boobiesates to support India's bid for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council with veto power.

"Despite French insistence that the US was an unreliable ally, said a diplomat, "India preferred the US somewhat blindly, and if the Americans are unreliable with us, they are going to be very unreliable with you. Those Boeings are not going to come in time for Air India to take commercial advantage, and it would be foolhardy to choose the F-16 over the Mirage.

But the denial of the Air India deal has come as a breaking point for France, which diplomats say is reviewing support to India's candidature as a permanent UN Security Council member, and it will likely now insist on a consensus for any expansion of the Council and its permanent members, and will lean in support of the Chinese position on this and other issues.

France won't back India in UNSC expansion | India-Defence

THE RESULT? Passengers forced into unsafe aircraft:a

Airbus India deal Sep 8 2005

Daily Post

AIRBUS has sold 43 aircraft to the Indian government in a deal worth £1.8bn, it was confirmed yesterday.

The contract will allow state-owned Indian Airlines to retire older jets as it tries to win back market share from nimble private carriers such as Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines.

An aviation ministry official said a sizeable reduction in the final price of the planes had been secured. Airbus wings are made at Broughton in Deeside.

Airbus is also contributing directly to the hurricane Katrina emergency relief effort.

The largest cargo carrier in the world, the A300-600 super transporter, is assisting the UK and French governments, air-lifting critical relief supplies to the hurricane stricken areas of the US.



Flight 587 - hundreds murdered by Scarebus

Monday April 29, 2002; 11:13 a.m. EDT
Pilots Want Airbus Grounded in Wake of 587 Crash

If November's crash of American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus 300-600, was caused by structural defects in the plane's tail - and not the midair explosion dozens of eyewitnesses say they saw - then why hasn't the Federal Aviation Administration grounded the entire Airbus fleet?

That's the question some American Airbus pilots are now asking, as they demand that the plane be withdrawn from service until any design flaws are corrected.

As weeks passed since the Nov. 12 crash with no word on why Flight 587's tail broke off, the discomfort level of American pilots grew, reports Newsday. So much so that they launched their own private investigation.

"The more we found out, the less comfortable we felt," said Jason Goldberg, a captain on the A300.

Concentrating on the Airbus' possible design defects, eight New York-based American pilots delivered a 77-page report to the FAA that recommended grounding the aircraft.

But the FAA isn't budging. "There is nothing to date that indicates there is a safety problem that would cause us to put the airplanes on the ground," FAA spokesman Les Dorr told Newsday.

Fine. But then what caused Flight 587's crash?



Any airline not buying 777 and pre-ordering 787s is run by farking idiots that want to murder the passengers with unsafe aircraft. All Scarebus aircraft are attempting murder on unsuspecting passengers.

Airbus claimed Boeing composites were not good enough for commercial aviation, but Boeing said in reply: "We've been testing them in Military planes for decades." Scarebus's only military vehicle is a piece of shiat designed to replace the C-130. Here is the jist of Scarebus's lies about Boeing:

July 04, 2004
Airbus Claims Boeing Rushed Composites into 7E7
Airbus engineers are claiming Boeing has rushed the development of the 7E7 Dreamliner. In particular, they say composite technology is not mature enough to build an all-composite fuselage. But the claims may be no more than a marketing ploy, in response to Boeing's criticism of weight overruns on the Airbus A380. For example, one Airbus VP stated that carbon composites are often no more than "black aluminum," providing little advantage over conventional materials. While that may be true in some cases, that is a design decision, not an inherent problem with the materials, and there is no evidence presented that Boeing is using that approach.



Airbus is being sued for being late with the Scarebus A380-666-Deathtrap: http://www.e-composites.com/frontend/newspage.aspx?sno=2788

Airbus May Face Lawsuit Over Superjumbo Delay

Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Singapore Airlines is preparing to take legal action against Airbus, the Franco-German aerospace company, over delays in delivering the giant A380 superjumbo jet.
Singapore Airlines had expected to be the first carrier to fly the A380. The aircraft was supposed to have been in service early next year, but delays in manufacturing mean the first of the world's largest airliner is unlikely to be delivered until towards the end of 2006.
Chew Choon Seng, the chief executive of Singapore Airlines, last week told Focus, a German magazine, that the airline may sue Airbus for damages.
He said the first of the double-decker planes would not now be delivered until November next year - eight months later than promised. Chew said the delay "greatly upsets our forecasts with regard to capacity". He also claimed that Airbus took some time to acknowledge the delay.



You should write to airlines as I have and strongly recommend that they support Boeing and the superior 777 lineup. 100% power attrition, less failure, full ETOPS certification up to ETOPS 207, and the 777-200LR world-liner goes farther than any other plane in existence on TWO engines.

Airbus Scarebus is a fraud, they are dangerous and responsible for murder. Airbus has killed more people than soldiers from the west in Iraq in combat action. Scarebus is a cheap shot half assed garbage heap that gets propped up by the EU and can't even sell wares to militaries the world over.

Scarebus: Vertical stabilizers fall off, threaten tsunami victims, threaten India, design the flawed and dangerous A380 and lie about delivery dates and propped up by socialist governments barely capable of competing.

Boeing had to relocate from Seattle to Chicago and fire 30,000 people to remain competitive but Scarebus, who has never fired or laid of anyone claims Boeing is subsidized by military contracts it has to bid against a HUGE list of contractors, Lockheed, Grumman, Raytheon, etc.

IF IT AINT BOEING I AINT GOING. Death to any executive of any Airline that wants to murder little kids and children with faulty SCAREBUS equipment.

Most passenger jets have two cabin-pressure valves, with separate motors operating each. Because aircraft makers want redundancy on safety systems, the planes have three motors for each valve, with different chips controlling each motor. The Boeing 777, for example, has cabin-pressure chips made by Motorola Inc., Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Most jetliners also have a manual override so that the pilot can take control in an emergency.

Airbus has acknowledged that its designers faced challenges as they attempted to reduce the A380's weight. Early on, the company elected to go with four outflow valves on the A380, with only one motor on each valve, which is slightly larger than a cabin window. Each motor uses a TTTech controller chip, and there is no manual override system.

Dave L

Magnificent until it runs off a runway it has to land on in an emergency and bursts into flames killing 800 people.

awachtel

I wrote to singapore airlines and said I will not fly on the Airbus 380 and asked why subject loyal customers to non Boeing aircraft.

zeio
For such accusations you may wish to name an instance of that happening.

/Companies are not evil they just don't care at all it is all in the name of profit

Fun fact: Unlike the rest of us, who wipe front-to-back, the French wipe their asses side-to-side.

tiiger
Much better aircraft (the MD-12)

hate to ruin your buzz but that plane will never be built

Pooter
An airline or sister-company of an airline that offers an entire plane of first-class seating. Not necessarily "free champagne and hookers" first-class...

Check out Midwest Airlines (www.midwestairlines.com). Fresh cookies along with first class seats in the entire cabin!

Dave L: This is just a bit of misplaced anti-european propaganda by the BEEB

Clearly you're right. Sounds like everything is hunky-dory in France:

PARIS -- Left-wing lawmakers jumped from their chairs, booed and shouted "resign, resign!" at Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on Tuesday during a heated parliamentary debate over financial troubles at the parent company of Airbus.

Villepin lost his temper under questioning from Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande about European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., which has seen its stock tumble after Airbus announced delays in its much-touted A380 superjumbo jet and questions surfaced about share selloffs by top executives.

"Mr. Hollande, I denounce your facile approach _ and I will even say this looking you in the eyes _ the cowardice in your attitude," Villepin said. "I'll say it again: cowardice."

Many Socialist lawmakers leaped up, shouting and gesturing furiously, causing such an uproar that the body's president had to interrupt the session. Although outbursts are frequent in the National Assembly, this one was of rare intensity.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/20/AR200606200081 1.html

RALEX
What a second, you're delaying the delivery dates AND you're raising the price?

Ah, but you see Ralex, Member states and potential member states are being pressured/forced to buy certain quantities of these planes. Ah, Nationalized industry.

Too bad that MaxJet doesnt fly out of Hartsfield, I'm stuck with stupid AirTran.

zeio

That is quite some trolling.

Oh yeah Boeing gets a lot of Government money, and tax breaks.
/I could also post every time a Boeing plane had an issue but I will be nice and not

I personally can't wait for the 777.
Big fan of boeing, much more reliable in terms of cargo drives.

/works Ground handling services