Return of the Giants! Are the B747's and A380's coming Back?!

are our beloved winged Giants the Boeing 747 and the Airbus A380 really and truly gone from production now and if that's the case then why are we done seeing more and more of the airlines bringing them back into service if these four engine behemoths no longer serve a purpose in today's Airline World well then how come they're still so popular with both Airlines and passengers and what will the future hold for them stay tuned we all know that efficiency is the true driving force behind the sign of any new airliner nowadays this has honestly been the case for decades now and it's definitely not something that the industry has suddenly woken up to thanks to renewed environmental concerns for the airlines fuel is their primary cost driver and because of that any new aircraft that promises to carry both loads of passengers while burning less fuel will always be interesting to them but that's provided that the airlines can actually fill all of those seats and that they can keep filling them during all year around if that's not the case well then this new aircraft won't be profitable to them and it won't be bought or if they've already bought it it will be discarded that's worth remembering in this story then let's have a look at our geology ions the 747 and the Airbus A380 Boeing delivered the last ever 747 to its customer a few weeks ago but that aircraft was a freighter not a passenger jet the last ever passenger carrying 7478 went to Korean Air nearly six years ago back in 2017. as for the last Airbus A380 that one was delivered to Emirates back in December of 2021 but before that delivery in 2020 the A380 had the questionable honor of being one of the first aircraft to be grounded as a result of the pandemic and maybe not surprisingly since long-haul flights were the slowest part of air travel to return these Giants were also among the last ones to return to service after the travel restrictions were lifted that they actually did return the service at all likely came as quite a bit of a surprise for some people in the business because their return contradicted some Airline Executives who had previously suggested that they may never bring back these giant Airlines to Flying status again once they had been grounded actually several times during the pandemic Airlines like Lufthansa Couture and Etihad did say that they were decommissioning the A380 fleets permanently but as it turned out all three of these Airlines would eventually change their minds so why is that well Qatar airlines is probably the easiest of the three to explain they had to ensure that they had enough capacity to handle the giant influx of passengers that the World Cup which Qatar hosted just a few months ago would bring they eventually returned eight of their 10 a380s and before this coming summer season Etihad will also reactivate at least four of its 10 a380s Lufthansa is currently planning to bring back eight of their 14 super jumbos but in their case the story is not only about the A380 no they are currently also the biggest operator of Passenger 747s with 27 of them in its Fleet and all but three are back flying again after having been stood down during the pandemic the fact that Lufthansa actually restarted flying at 7478 way back in March of 2021 right when the vaccine rollouts were just getting started and that they even decided to bring back its older 747 400s later during the same year is truly remarkable and if you go back to the A380 aside from the airlines that I just mentioned the super jump boats are now also back in service with All Nippon Airways Asiana Airlines British Airways Korean Air Qantas and Singapore Airlines and of course it's in service with Emirates who originally took delivery of about as many a380s as all of the other airlines combined Emirates never really took the A380 completely out of service during the pandemic but since they took delivery of 123 of them that might not be that surprising Oh and before I forget there is also another quad jet that I haven't even mentioned yet and that I think a lot of people don't even think about and that's the Airbus A340 which surprisingly is also back in service with the likes of Lufthansa Swiss and also a few other airlines so as you can see there is clearly some demand for them but could Boeing and Airbus realistically start building more of these quadrates again I mean on the face of it this renewed interest seems quite hard to explain given the current feverish strive for efficiency and cost cutting doesn't it oh and by the way while we're speaking about being efficient wouldn't you wish to know more about communication leadership finances Wellness or even parenting without having to spend ridiculous amount of time reading books or expert guides well with the help of today's sponsor blinkist you can discover Brand New Perspectives broaden your horizons have exciting conversations and really experience those aha moments on the go blinkis is a platform that distills 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Airlines did bring back their 747 and a38 is a lot more Airlines did not and actually shows the retired them permanently by sending them off to the scrapyard in the case of the 747s this of course wasn't very surprising given the age of their original design before 2020 Airlines like British Airways and KLM whose 747 fleets were older than most had already scheduled their retirement for the first half of this decade the pandemic simply hurried up this process slightly but it was not a new decision by contrast though several Airlines like Air France China Southern and Malaysia Airlines retired their a380s which is of course a much younger design than the 747 in fact in many cases these scrapped aircraft was less than a decade old when they met their fate and at the same time curiously as those Airlines were scrapping their almost new Jets Lufthansa is not only keeping their a380s and 747s in service they're actually upgrading the passenger cabins on them and that's not something that Airlines normally do unless they plan to actually keep them in service for many many years to come to understand these differences in how airlines are dealing with their jumbos we have to talk a little bit about the different operating models that different airlines employ as I've explained in previous videos we broadly refer to these different models as the Hub and spoke model and the point-to-point model The Hub and spoke model is the older of the two and its name come from the structure of a bicycle wheel this is the system that most traditional Airlines or flag carriers used to prefer as its name suggests the system involves one large airport being the Hub with aircraft flying in and out of that airport like the spokes of a wheel this model typically uses smaller feeder aircraft that brings passengers into the Hub and then they would board a larger long-haul aircraft for their onward Journey out into the world this would mean that there would be a lot of traffic into the Hub so the amount of slots which is the landing and takeoff times would quickly become limited and therefore very expensive because of this the airlines would need larger planes that could take a lot of passengers but still only use one slot to make the most out of the Hub and that was of course the whole idea behind the construction of the Airbus A380 but what's happening now is that today a lot of airlines including most flag carriers actually are moving away from the Hub and spoke model towards some version of the point-to-point system instead in the point-to-point model the aircraft and its crew will instead perform trips between multiple destinations without stopping at a big Hub this is generally a more efficient system although it can also be a little bit less flexible in the case of unforeseen problems just ask Southwest Airlines about that more broadly though the point-to-point model enables trips with smaller aircraft making direct flights which tends to be more popular with passengers and costs the airlines less both in terms of slot fees and in fuel burn but there are exceptions to this flight towards point to point some airlines are still very well suited for the old Hub and spoke model I've mentioned Emirates as an example of this in previous videos and the position of their single base in Dubai means that they can connect many destinations between Europe Asia or Syria and the Americas through their Hub and the same goes for other large carriers in the Gulf States as well then of course there is the Australian flag carrier Qantas who had to connect the country that they come from with a range of very distant destinations similar to what Singapore Airlines and even British Airways is doing thanks to their broad Network these Airlines have no trouble feeling a big jet like the A380 and crucially they can do so all year round that fact the need to fill these large jets with passengers all year round in order for them to be profitable is a huge part of why other large Airlines around the world have never placed orders for the A380 because most Airlines today have a very pronounced seasonal operating model with the majority of their passenger loads being flown in the summer months for them it just doesn't make sense to operate a super jumbo if it cannot be filled and therefore would lose money for at least half of the year in the United States which is a huge Market by the way not only did the A380 not get a single order from any of the airlines neither did the passenger version of the 7478 airlines in the US retire the last of their passenger carrying 747-400s many years ago except for a handful of shorter companies now U.S carriers also have large networks but remember they have to fly to these long-haul destinations from multiple home bases not only from one or two big cities and that is likely the reason why these Airlines haven't really been interested in aircraft the size of the 747 or the Airbus A380 the multitude of bases means that there are less passengers in each one of them making the operation of smaller twin engine airliners much more cost efficient and in fact airlines in the United States have yet to order even Boeing's newer twin-engine jumbo Replacements the triple 7X smaller aircraft with a nice long range like the 787 and the Airbus a350 for example are just a much better fit for this type of operating model and on top of that the jumbos requires special stands and Airport infrastructure just to handle them which also costs the airlines much more money but does the renewed interest from some Airlines mean that we could see the 747s and the a380s make a comeback as a viable alternative well as you probably guessed by now the answer to that is likely a hard no now having said that I have explained in another video that Emirates in particular would like to see a replacement of its enormous A380 Fleet preferably something with two big engines with a similar passenger capacity but with the much lower maintenance cost and fuel burn that two engines would mean and maybe foldable wing tips so fit into the cheaper gate categories that's likely why Emirates have placed a record-sized order for Boeing's upcoming triple 7x it just takes a lot of their boxes now fitting these four engine Giants with newer engines could theoretically make them more efficient but the same process can also be done more efficiently with the twin engine aircraft which is indeed what Boeing did with the triple 7X having said that the 7478 itself was actually such a re-engine and slightly enlarged in 747-400 the passenger carrying 7478 is around 13 more efficient per seat than the older version and it is fitted with the General Electric NX engines which are the same as on the 787 then we must also touch on the potential of converting these giants into cargo aircraft or maybe more correctly the lack of that potential the 747 was designed from the very beginning as a freighter with that giant front door being an almost unique feature in commercial Aviation which allowed loading of oversized cargo lengthwise down the cabin but unfortunately it is not possible to retrofit passenger 747s without front door they can only be retrofitted with the side opening door and the cabin of these Jets aren't really wide enough to make them more usable for a cargo loaded through a door like that than a Boeing triple seven or an Airbus a350 freighter would be the A380 was never really made into a freighter version and we don't know exactly why that was but it is likely that the hull and structure of the A380 would limit the weight distribution in such a way that if it was ever made into a freighter it would be a ridiculously large packet freighter but not suitable for container Freight and if that was the case it wouldn't be as efficient as a more versatile twin engine freighter conversion and then of course we get into the real practical matter here the return of the 747 and the Airbus A380 into production is likely not even a possibility anymore before the last A380 went to its customer Airbus had already started work on converting its final assembly line in Toulouse into a line for the smaller but much more popular a321 Neo Airbus really needs to boost production of its single aisle aircraft to keep its delivery waiting list from getting completely out of control Boeing's plans for its 747 production line in Everett Washington are probably along the same lines except that Boeing was already reorganizing its activities there after moving production of all 787 variants away from there Boeing will initially use the empty space where the 747 line used to be to finish checks on the reworked 787s the old 787 finish assembly line will then eventually be used for assembling the new 737 Maxis the specific tooling used for the creation of the 747 and the Airbus A380 is likely already gone and recreating that tooling would be possible but probably very expensive now of course all I've said so far still doesn't really explain why an airline like Lufthansa still uses a380s 747s and even Airbus a340s and also why they don't seem to be in a hurry to replace them well really the best way to understand why some Airlines retired their four engine Jets While others didn't is to look at what else is going on in these Airlines fleets basically we can explain this with the use of two simple questions first regarding the airlines that have permanently retired their quad yet what did they replace them with and for the airlines that are still using them what new aircraft orders do they have because this is where we get to the story of the Boeing 787 and the triple 7x in the case of Lufthansa they have orders for 34 Boeing triple 7x and 32 787s deliveries of the triple 7x2 Airlines worldwide should have started back in 2020 but then it was delayed to 2023 where we are right now and now they're not expected until earliest next year late 2024 and possibly even beyond that and when it comes to the Boeing 787 Lufthansa has started taking deliveries of a few of them but it's been going very slowly so far like I explained in one of my older videos Boeing delivered very few 787s for a period of nearly two years between 2020 and 2022. due to issues that they found with the joints between the composite fuselage section of the aircraft and this slow delivery rate means that the airlines who were counting on these new aircraft to arrive but still haven't received them are in a little bit of a squeeze right now with demand for air travel increasing rapidly and with strong bookings for this coming summer already those Airlines have to make sure that they still have the capacity they need both in terms of aircraft and Crews this is especially true since there are still some worries about airport capacity constraints that I explained in my video last week one big jet is often easier for airport to handle than two smaller jets are and on top of that one big thirsty quad jet is still better than having no aircraft and not being able to sell tickets for that flight at all plus it is also worth remembering that the 747s and the Airbus a380s are both really popular with passengers the A380 is a big quiet aircraft that is a true pleasure to travel on and I actually did so myself with Qatar just a few weeks back and I will soon release a video about my thoughts on that trip and when it comes to the Boeing 747 it will always be a favorite with AV Geeks and others not only because of its unique shape and Legacy but also because it's a really fast aircraft so as it turns out there are some very logical reasons for the return of these lovely Giants but the question now is how long will they stay in service after the 787 and the triple 7x issues are sold and their extra capacity is no longer needed well you know we're gonna have to wait to find that out but with Boeing still suffering from delays in its 787 production it looks like the A380 and 747 might still have a role to play in the near future and like Emirates has proven it is possible to for some Airlines at least to keep using these Jets full and profitable with the right root Network now I hope you found that interesting and if you want to see more videos explained in the aviation World well then check out this playlist if you want to support me and my team then consider sending a super thanks or buy some awesome merch or even consider joining my lovely patreon crew I would love to see you guys in my next patreon hangout have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time bye

Channel: Mentour Now!

Views: 551,687

Keywords: mentour pilot, trending, plane crash, boeing, Sriwijaya, 182, autothrottle, storytelling, full episodes, investigation, documentary, entertainment, mentour now, airbus

Id: rIXRVqEl_Iw

Length: 19min 19sec (1159 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 11 2023