The Airbus A380: The Incredible Plane that No One Wants

it can take you from Dallas Texas to Sydney Australia it could take you from the city of Dubai to Sao Paulo it can fly from Boston to Johannesburg from Paris to Jakarta from Seattle to Seoul and it'll make all of those flights every last one without having to touch down before reaching its destination the Airbus A380 is a Marvel of long-haul travel a plane all but unrivaled by anything else in the sky and over 15 years into its career it remains one of the most impressive civilian aircraft that the world has ever seen so in today's episode we're gonna go inside the A380 in detail from its cutting-edge design to its top-notch service record to the quandries and challenges that it's continued to face trying to justify its place as the heftiest plane in the sky [Music] [Music] the story of the Airbus A380 doesn't start with the A380 instead it starts with the Boeing 747 which when it first entered service in 1970 was the first wide-body long-haul modern jumbo jet that the world had ever seen the 747 was a major advancement in civilian air travel between its cruising speed not far from the speed of sound and its potential to carry well over 350 people on longer continuous flights than previously been possible the 747 was a resounding Commercial Success with over 1500 of the planes produced and it's still in service today more than five decades after it first took off on 747 also gave Boeing a monopoly on long-haul high-capacity airline travel meaning that any airline that wanted to offer such Journeys to their passengers would have to do it by purchasing a fleet of 740 but it was by no means a perfect plane and its high operating costs meant that when Airlines did pick up some 747s they often did so begrudgingly let me interrupt today's episode to tell you about our fantastic sponsor Squarespace the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand Squarespace makes it easy to create a 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also quickly touch on analytics we all want our websites to succeed and with squarespace's powerful insights you can grow your website and grow your business so if you're ready to take your online presence to the next level go to squarespace.com Mega projects for a free trial when you're ready to launch your website use the code Mega projects to save 10 off your first purchase there is a link below and now back to today's episode by the late 1980s several aircraft design companies were beginning to realize that they could break Boeing's Monopoly if they could produce their own high capacity airliner McDonnell Douglas offered the ultimately unsuccessful md-12 Lockheed was working behind the scenes to build their own super-sized subsonic transport and over in Europe Airbus wanted in on the action too in 1988 an engineer named Gene Rhoda was cleared to begin looking into what it might take to build an ultra high capacity airliner and he and his team of Airbus Engineers secretly embarked on a series of early design drafts and feasibility studies two years later at the farnborough air show in England Airbus Representatives announced that their company had decided to go forward with their effort to produce a competitor aircraft to the 747 with one additional goal that their aircraft's operating costs would be 15 cheaper than Boeing 747-400s for design teams each comprised of some Airbus partner companies stepped forward to offer their own Technologies to the eventual design and in 1992 several were selected to pitch on the project the yet unnamed aircraft obviously caught the interest of Boeing 2 given how it had potential to upend their entire business model and Boeing an Airbus actually ended up in a temporary collaboration around the project during 1993 and part of 1994 but in June of that year Airbus announced that their joint partnership with Boeing would not continue instead they'd be going it alone for the project that they designated a3xx this didn't appear to be too massive of a loss for Boeing their own inquiries into the so-called new large aircraft planned quad jet successor to the 747 was abandoned not long after due to Boeing's concerns that the project wouldn't be lucrative enough to cover its own costs but Airbus apparently didn't have such concerns or otherwise they felt confident enough to proceed despite the risk in the end both companies seemed happy to go their separate ways Boeing was able to avoid potential antitrust action in the United States and to hear Airbus tell it it would be difficult to see how we could cooperate with Boeing on a large aircraft and be it loggerheads with them on everything else some of the initial designs for the a3xx were let's say unconventional one of them known as the p500 would have involved using a so-called horizontal double bubble in which two tweaked versions of Airbus existing A340 fuselage would have been joined together laterally and then encased in a single outer fuselage this would have made for a really wide plane with three aisles altogether about 20 larger than the 747-400 with a total overall capacity of 570 people the goal of this design was to try and use the wide fuselage to generate a bit of extra lift a concept that's been repeated with the more recently proposed and exceptionally weird looking Aurora d8 although this wasn't ultimately what Airbus went with it was the first in several attempts to design an optimal fuselage for the plane its projector carrying capacity meant that simply making an existing Airbus plane longer would badly mess with its aerodynamics and if Airbus had attempted to compensate with some really gargantuan Wings then they'd have a very hard time fitting the plane into any existing airport a few other designs were considered as well as the horizontal double bubble a circular design which necessitated a cramped up a deck and a Cloverleaf design which was more spacious but far less aerodynamically efficient ultimately Airbus dropped all three of these Concepts in favor of a so-called ovoid structure which is sort of an eggshell shape when viewed in cross-section a long oval that only comprised a minimal amount of space but didn't limit the plane's ability to fly too badly this meant that the plane would also be a double decker and it would have two decks all the way through instead of just in a smaller forward section like the 747 Airbus designated 2 likely versions of the plane at smaller craft that would seat about 500 and a larger one to seat about 600. but before long these designs would begin to expand in size and so too with the number of available seats mercifully Airbus decided to avoid what it described as prisoner seats the mid middle seat of the 5c to press middle row found on the 747 instead they were under the design for the main deck that went four seats across in the center with three on either side Beyond how to arrange its carrying capacity though the A3 XX project had a number of other problems to consider such a massive aircraft would have to be able to distribute its way to cross a flexible structure like an airplane fuselage the wheels too would have to be able to Bear over a million pounds of weight it would have to be able to navigate the airports of the world it would have to be kept reasonably quiet and if something went wrong Airbus absolutely had to have protocols in place to get so many people out promptly in order to deal with the plane's long-haul needs ever sought out newly developed engines from Rolls-Royce and the General Electric Pratt and Whitney engine Alliance and expanded its wings to nearly 8 500 square feet with a capacity for 319 and a half tons of fuel for a range of 7450 nautical miles the wings were designed to include carbon fiber Composites and the plane was built with a common cockpit shared with airbuses other planes to ensure that crew members could easily qualify to fly the heavier plane they were able to work out an evacuation system to get up to 966 passengers out of the plane in under 90 seconds or with that number of 966 by the way being the plane's capacity if the entire thing was built only with economy style seats the plane was given Advanced avionics and Airbus even tried out a version of the plane with forward mounted Canyons although This was later dropped but even with all of these developments the A3 XX program based another obstacle Airlines hungry for a contract and trying to decide whether they should wait for the promising Airbus model or purchase newer Boeing 747s from Boeing to deal with their demand for long-wall aircraft Airbus was hesitant to move up its production timeline both because of a desire to ensure that they could churn out a good number of planes each year and in order to avoid the potential embarrassments of putting out a poorly developed first edition of the aircraft however the company did eventually Fast Track the design process and they took full advantage of their Announcement by deciding to undercut Boeing's price tag for New Generation 747s this massive middle finger to Boeing paid off in Spades in January 1997 Boeing announced that it wouldn't be pursuing any plans to expand the 747 clearing the way for the A3 XX to dominate the super jumbo jet Market unfortunately for Airbus the good news wouldn't last long a stock market crash in Asia led to a temporary Market slump bringing up internal questions on whether Airbus could really keep its promises to save costs over dominant 747 models the original plans to accelerate development were taken back and Airbus did its best to explain to the waiting public that it was important not to rush into a final design despite frustration from the airline industry Airbus was able to continue forward with the process and by December of 2000 the plane was finally ready for a go-ahead with 50 orders lined up the A3 XX was christened the A380 with the number eight chosen partly to represent the double decker cross-section and partly as a good luck symbol in the Asian countries where Airbus had hoped to find buyers for aircraft production for the aircraft took place all across Western Europe some of them shuttle around by specialist barges and oversized trucks and others by airbus's iconic Beluga aircraft although the planes were built in a range of locations their components were assembled in Toulouse France where the plane was eventually unveiled in 2005. after some very promising tests the A380 took its first passenger carry in flight on September 4 2006 and once that plane touched down safely it was just about ready for business but bad version of events somewhat emits the many delays that Airbus faced in production each aircraft required some 530 kilometers of wiring and because Airbus was building each Aircraft Interior custom for its Airline the assembly process was both extremely detailed and very drawn out the plane suffered from software issues it was difficult to configure and according to many workers at Airbus the company culture was often overreactionary toward bad news meaning that workers often avoided or delayed giving bad news until it was too late to handle it proactively Airlines were forced to deal with significant delays which in turn took their toll on the Airbus company spinning up bad press all around and stoking controversy that still endures today and moreover the plane was expensive all told the aircraft had cost somewhere between 11 and 14 billion euros by the time the first aircraft was completed and external analysts had estimated that the entire development cost of the program might have been closer to 20 or even 25 billion but regardless of the cost by 2007 the plane was finally ready to fly full time what a plane it was the Airbus A380 is the world's largest passenger plane at a length of about 73 meters 239 feet in a wingspan of 80 meters or 262 feet the plane can carry 575 passengers in its base configuration and has capacity for 853 people when fitted out entirely in economy technically speaking it can hold even more people than that but it's constrained by safety ratings the plane sits at a width of 7 meters with a lower deck that holds seats pen abreast and economy class in between two and four abreast at First Class the upper deck holds passengers six abreast in business class and eight in economy the plane has a maximum payload of 84 tons with an empty weight of 285 000 kilograms but a maximum takeoff weight of nearly double that the A380 hits Crews at 903 kilometers per hour 561 miles per hour or 0.85 times the speed us out it flies below a surface ceiling of 43 000 feet and can handle journeys of up to 14 800 kilometers or 9 200 miles well over a third of the circumference of the earth Beyond its basic specifications the a 380 becomes even more impressive once we peek under the hood powered by Advanced engines the plane produces half the noise of an early model 747 and because it only needs thrust reversal on two of those engines it kicks up far less debris when Landing the plane's Wing design reduces the turbulence it leaves immediately behind it which if left unchecked might oppose the danger to other aircraft the design also gives it a slow landing speed about 130 knots allowing it to decelerate on the ground in a far less jarring way than one would expect from an aircraft of its size fuselage augments are mostly aluminum frame with a range of Composites from carbon fiber Plastics to quartz fibers and the wings are machined in a way that Contour it smoothly all the way across reducing drag the aircraft can be maintained without any special Machinery to accommodate its Composites and in newer models the airframe is welded together rather than using rivets making the entire airframe both lighter and stronger it's avionics package includes real-time Computing modules first adopted in fighter aircraft at its Flight Deck while certainly not uncluttered is substantially more streamlined than those are competition aircraft the plane uses fly by wire controls and has enough technology to make its cockpit completely paperless with all necessary data easily accessed through a keyboard interface and as much as the A380 is designed to be pilot friendly so too is it passenger friendly or at least as passenger friendly as long-haul airplanes can be the interior is built to be quiet and a relatively highly pressurized with more overhead storage capacity less cabin noise larger windows and significantly more Headroom than the 747 the seats are wider than most other aircraft even in economy and it's relatively easy to move about the cabin unfortunately airbus's early promises to include things like bars beauty salons and restaurant on their planes were somewhat predictably forgotten in order to maximize passenger space but well the world should have probably seen that one coming on some a380s particularly those owned by Airlines like Emirates and etiad Airways passengers might find premium cabins enclosed first-class suites with a bed and even showers running hot water while other airlines boast bar lounges art displays or even one or two apartment style suites for the Uber Rich Among Us who decide not to fly private for some reason [Music] the plane first entered service with Singapore Airlines and within two months it was generating overwhelmingly positive press according to the airline CA the A380 was burning 20 less fuel than the 747 and other airlines quickly voiced their approval of the plane's fuel economy and its technical reliability in the years after attempted service the A380 demonstrated that it could fly using synthetic liquid Fuel and its airframe strength maximum takeoff weight and range have all been improved overall the A380 tends to please its passengers and its Pilots alike both in contrast to other travel options available for long-haul flights and by offering an objectively halfway decent experience in the sky but the A380 has also been beset by problems especially in its early years in 2012 cracks were discovered in the wing fittings of an A380 after one of its engines had disintegrated this crisis was the a380s first some four and a half years after it ended service but it nonetheless required all operating a380s to be checked and Airbus eventually had to pay out over 130 million dollars in repair costs in 2014 Airbus had to fix the a380s doors due to their Troublesome tendency to leak air out of the airplane which took another 100 million euros out of airbus's bank account overall the A380 has been able to boast one of the most spotless records of any aircraft between 2007 and 2021 it carried over 300 million passengers across 800 000 flights with zero whole lot accidents zero onboard fatalities and 99 reliability overall the engine failure that we mentioned previously was one of only two notable incidents that the A380 has ever had to deal with the other in September of 2017 was also an incident of uncontained engine failure aboard an Air France flight but like the prior plane it was able to land safely with only one of its four engines being compromised as of today there are 254 a380s in existence flying with a range of Airlines from British Airways to Emirates to Qantas to Korean Air as successful as the A380 has been overall it's also been beleaguered over time by lower than expected market demand for its services Global need for very large aircraft like the A380 has been significantly less than Airbus had initially estimated and although the operating costs are lower than the 747 Airlines can also do the same job with more modern smaller and cheaper aircraft Airlines have tended to offer fewer and fewer long-haul flights preferring instead to offer high frequency shorter distance flights that can easily route passengers between several airports without too much lost time the A380 can't compete with the Boeing 767 on transatlantic flights or the Triple 7 on trans-pacific flights the plane also has a rather unusual lack of other variants a freight version was discarded in 2013 despite the fact that it would have boasted the highest freighter payload of any plane on Earth other than the an-225 mirror ripped to the goat multiple enlarged versions have been proposed and then let go despite the potential to increase range or carrying capacity simply because these aren't features that are actually in demand into as a result Airbus has failed to break even on its A380 program and admits that it will never recoup the 25 billion euros that had invested in the plane several major airlines have already retired the A380 Air France and high-fly Malta let it go during the covert pandemic and Malaysia Airlines retired the last A380 in October of 2022. Emirates Korean Air tires Asiana Airlines and Qatar are all in the process of phasing out the planes Lufthansa and etiad Airways have only recently begun returning a few a380s to the sky after prolonged groundings of their entire fleet over its lifespan the A380 has never been picked up by an American Airline mostly because they would have required significant airport modifications in order to receive or de-lane their passengers without such a massive Market with most Airlines only needing a dozen or fewer of the planes to meet their own service capacity there's just no reason for more a380s to be produced while the list of reasons to retire them has just grown longer and longer so that's the A380 it's impressive design its feets in the air but also the many challenges that have ultimately forced about down to earth the A380 still flies today and a handful of Airlines and they are among the most unique and often the most opulent air travel options that a travel is likely to find but if you hope to have the chance to ride in one well now's the time in five years in 10 and 15 it's all too likely that the A380 will no longer fly brought down by an industry that certainly respected its capabilities but ultimately just didn't need them with no market demand for a plane like it it's entirely likely that the A380 status is the world's largest passenger aircraft will live on but it'll have to live on after the A380 is eventual and complete departure from the sky [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 2,353,937

Keywords: airbus a380, airbus a300, airbus a310, airbus a320, airbus a330, airbus a340, airbus a350, commercial planes, air travel, airbus, planes, aviation, boeing news, commercial

Id: _10XOCg6KGI

Length: 20min 9sec (1209 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 23 2023