Airbus rolled-out their brand new A380 today.
What the hell?
It's a monster: it has two full decks of seating and is designed to carry a minimum of 550 passengers, with room for expansion to nearly 900.
All I hear around the U.S. is Airline bankruptcies. All you see is the downsizing of aircraft to make them more fuel efficient and cheaper, allowing the airlines to go to more "regional" airports. But you are also seeing airlines pulling out of airports because of financial problems, and bankruptcy. Fuel costs are going up - could you imagine what it will cost to fly this thing? Is the passenger/mile calculation based on 550 passengers or 900?
It still has problems before it takes its first flight sometime in March: it's 5 tons over its spec of 560 tons maximum takeoff weight. 1.45 euros over budget , putting it at 12 billion euros.
Its 262-foot wingspan and 239-foot-long fuselage means it can't land just anywhere - airports have to spend millions of dollars to modify the taxiways just to allow the airplane to move around, let alone spacing at gate areas.
Seems like companies that are buying the planes won't operate them at that high-capacity figure, so what are they going to put into all of that space? Virgin Atlantic will offer a beauty therapist area, a gym, a casino and double beds.
Oh, puh-lease.
How long is that going to last? Does anybody remember the Piano Bars in the back of American Airlines DC-10's? They didn't last long. Airlines soon wanted the space to add more passengers. It's been tried before (not on this kind of scale) and people just won't pay for it.
2006- 20,000 and climbing
2004- Time to move the blog...
2003- Trading Spaces Las Vegas Live Reveal
- The Fellowship of the Ring
2002- Bad receiver, no job match