Why The Airbus A380 Was Doomed To Be A Failure?

14^th Of February 2019, When Everyone Was Enjoying and Celebrating Valentine’s Day, It Was A Black Day for Both Airbus and The Whole Aviation Industry. On 14^th Of Feb 2019 Airbus Announced Their A380 Have Been Cancelled, With Production Ending In 2021. For All the Aviation Geeks, A380 Fanboys, and future Aspiring A380 Pilots Like Me, Hearing This Was Just Heartbreaking. While, Airbus Only Managed to Run Its 4 Engine Jet Only for 12 Years, Its Biggest Rival the Seattle Giant Or Boeing 747 Family Celebrated Its 50^th Anniversary. But the Closure of The A380 Was A Sigh of Relief for Airbus, Rather A Heartbreak. After 12 Years of Shaky Development and Not Making Any Profits, Its Closure Didn’t Came As A Surprise. Hello and Hi to All the Aviation Geeks Out There and Today in This Blog We Will Dive in The Search of Answer For Why The Airbus A380 Or The Gentle Giant Will Be Grounded.

1.Poor Business Planning’s

This Is the Major Reason for The Downfall of The A380. All the A380 were Put into a Basket Called Emirates-The A380’s Biggest Buyer. Unlike, Boeing Which Didn’t Invest Its Property into One Pool and Made Their Aircraft Widespread. If We Look at The Charts, Airbus Has Got Orders Of 313 Orders So Far for The A380, Out of Which 162 Were Ordered by Emirates. That’s A Very Huge Number And Is More Than 50% of The Aircraft’s Sales. So, It Clearly Is A Scene, That Emirates Was Pretty Much Single-Handedly Giving Life and Hope to The A380 Or in Other Words, Emirates Was the Doctor Who Was Saving the A380 By Putting Him on Ventilator. In Comparison to The Other Companies, Like Singapore Airlines Which Bought Only 24 Of Them And Lufthansa 20. Valentine’s Day This Year was One of Heartbreak for Airbus, When Emirates Cutted Off Its Order Of 162 A380 to 123, shattering any hopes for the aircraft.

2. Bigger Isn’t Always Better

While Schooling Or In His Life One Must Have Heard About This Proverb. With A Wingspan Stretching Almost 80 Meters, You Can Imagine How Difficult Is It to Usher the Giant Four Turbine Jet Around Airports. Airports Are Required to Undergo All Sorts of Changes, from Wider Taxiways, Larger Holding Rooms and Amenities for Passengers, To Bigger Hangars. Its Four Colossal Turbines Present A Whole New List of Upgrades Required, Including Stronger Runway to Withstand the Sheer Force of Its Four Colossal Turbines, and signs that need to be tilted, or shifted so they do not blow away. These Amendments Don’t Come Cheap. Airports Like San Francisco International Spent Over $2 Billion to build new terminals that would facilitate planes of such proportions. Other Airports simply shunned the idea narrowing the market for the A380.

3. Changing Markets 

Airbus Failed to Foresee how consumers, tastes in air travel would change over the years. They Held Onto the belief that commuters would prefer flying to major airport hubs like Singapore, Tokyo etc, making the twin-deck A380 the ideal choice for airlines. It would ease congestion in these busy airports, offloading up to 800 passengers a time. However, Boeing Got the Upper hand with their vision that travelers would prefer taking smaller and direct routes to their destinations. It Was First Observed When Qantas Cancelled Its Sydney To London Flight Via Dubai And Replaced It With A Boeing 777 And Travelled Directly From Sydney To London. Now You Would Be Thinking, Then Why Not The A380 From Sydney To London Directly? Qantas Did It As If They Fly Directly To London It Would Have Made Less Revenue. But Passengers Didn’t Preferred It And Started Using Other Aircraft And Even Airlines.

 4. Not Making Profits

While A seating capacity of 800 may seem impressive at first, it is not so easy feat to fill up. As Explained Earlier With Qantas Flight Example. For airlines, it’s a struggle to just breakeven, never mind profits. To maximize revenue, airliners need to fill their seats, which is incentivized with discounts and promotions. This Makes it difficult to keep to revenue targets, especially during times when the economy is doing badly even more empty seats or canceled flights. Before that the operating costs of the A380 Is Very Expensive. Also, With Increasing Oil Prices the A380 Burns At Least $30,000 Of Fuel Every Hour While The B747 Only Burnt $15,000 Of Fuel. Think For Sometime If You Were A Airline CEO Which Plane U Would Have Preferred? Feel Free To Comment Below.

 5. Manufacturing Issues

Airbus Engineers Made A Huge Mistake When they used two different versions of the same 3D modeling and simulation software to design the plane. While One May Think That Two Different Versions of The Same Software’s Might Not Be an Issue, Think of It More on The Lines of Operating Systems Like Windows and macOS. Things Were completely incompatible when translated into the real world, it meant the wiring harness and floor panels did not quite align perfectly which increased its cost as they had to do more simulations. And The Money Also Spent On The A380F Or A380 Freighter Which Was Not A Success.

 

Make No Mistake About One Fact airbus a380 is an engineering marvel, a plane unlike any other that mankind has ever produced. A fully loaded Airbus A380 weighs 575 tonnes and the very fact that such heft can rise off the ground seems to defy the very laws of physics. Flying on one of these aircraft is An Amazing Feeling. 

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