A380 or Bust

I keep on hearing/reading/seeing/gawking at anything to do with Airbus’s new A380 commercial jet. The A380 is basically a huge, massive, grotesque piece of airline trash. The thing is supposed to be able to carry a maximum of 850 passengers. That’s like the Star Ship Enterprise of the airways. Now the propaganda Airbus spews out talks about a 550 seat passenger jet with bars, and shops on board – heck they might as well add in a swimming pool. We all know that everyone who buys the suckers will just stock it full of seats – that is if they are interested in making money at all.

Now I have to be careful what I say most of the time about the A380, because some of the people I may be potentially working for soon will be doing work on that enchilada. So – ahum – my bias is clear.

But I have to be honest – the A380 in my opinion is not a good idea. Basically my motto is bigger ain’t better.

The number one expense that commercial airliners face isn’t fuel, isn’t maintenance, isn’t the little pre-packaged meals from ONEX, it’s financing. I know, as an aspiring Engineer I was disappointed to. You’d’ like to believe that all the fluid and stress analyses you do makes a difference – but really it’s a low item in the totem pole of life. Jets costs millions to make, and millions more to buy – financing is the critical issue. And with the A380 you’re talking about a quarter billion. To me that would seem a little ridiculous to increase what is already the number one cost associated with airline travel.

And that’s not to mention the other effect such a huge aircraft will have on the airline industry – more regulations. Politicians only move when the peasants don’t like what they see. And the peasants, when they see a few hundred car fatalities a year on the news it’s given to them in healthy regular doses. But when a hundred seat passenger jet crashes killing everyone on board – that just overdoses them. Politicians react to large death counts in high concentrations. And replacing a couple hundred seat size passenger jets with 800 seaters is only going to mean more reaction and more regulations.

If that weren’t the worst of the A380 I can think of no more damning a thing than this: what happens if fuel prices rise even more? Ticket prices will probably go up… What airlines really need is more efficient airplanes that can travel farther, faster, and are easier to maintain… Not a humongo monstrocity...

Airbus has only 100 orders left to sell before they break even though – so I may be proven wrong yet.

Of course if I ever get a job working on something to do with the A380 I take it all back.