The Queen of the Skies, soon to be gone . BA and Virgin retiring theirs early. I've been on them many a time. Just a gorgeous piece of machinery.
Yes, the end of an era, bracketed either side by two different ways to solve the problem, 747 on one hand and Concorde on the other. Neither vision of the future for air travel, but both amazing pieces of machinery
747 was a good deal more realistic than Concorde. She had a good run, I suppose, but technology caught up with her.
Yes, and the slow demise of "hub and spoke" travel due to airports becoming exceedingly unpleasant experiences. I reckon the A380 could be facing problems too, maybe for routes to Oz it will still be viable?
A group buy would get one cheap ,theres theres gonna be a glut of them on the market soon . Anyone got a bit of storage space?
Think the A380’s more or less dead as well. Not quite sure what Airbus were thinking when they developed that. Just too big.
They were betting on more hub and spoke travel, then 9/11 happened and airports became horrible experiences and everyone wanted more point-to-point travel to avoid unnecessary layovers.
We got to go up to the cockpit of one after a flight to Florida last year, couldn’t believe how tiny the cockpit was. The pilots were saying how fab they were to fly though.
Gutted at this - one of my childhood memories of seeing the early versions of 747 when at Heathrow airport for a day out - I was very ill aged five with a burst appendix and I chose a day out at Heathrow as a present when I left hospital. One of the Terminals had a paddling pool on the roof terrace, got a photo of me in it - cant fathom why it was there, or why my mother had a pair of swimming trunks for me to wear....
I’ve never found A380s very impressive. They’re just a big scaled-up Airbus with more wheels. 747s just look great, with their big humpy nose. Classic piece of design.
They had to forecast about 10 years ahead, so probably proceeded with feedback/aspirations of airlines at the time - there used to be reluctance for airlines to cross oceans with twin engine aircraft? The A340 has been disappearing at pace as well so the 787 and A350 seem to have the fuel efficient, long haul market covered. Will still see 747's as cargo workhorses - Boeing still making them for that, and there are rumours of A380's as cargo conversions. ***Zips up plane-spotting anorak***
Yes you are correct. The A380 programme is being wound down. I heard an Airbus employee talking about it on the radio a couple of weeks ago. I think they had one of the major purchasers of the 380 reduce what they had on order so they decided to wind it down a bit early.
I've done quite a bit of air travel, most of it for business (shoved in economy class of course ) and I've only got to fly on the 74 twice, Heathrow to LAX and PHX back to Heathrow in 2016. Sad to see they are being removed from duty, but its progress, I think all large twins now are certified for ETOPS, meaning 4 engines is unnecessary and inefficient.
I only had the pleasure of flying on a 747 once. I was going to Cape Town to meet the inlaws-to-be for the first time. Somehow I got an upstairs seat with SAA economy and it was by the window/emergency exit with about 6ft of legroom. Felt like 1st class. Sat up drinking wine all night with my new buddy, Jacob Smuts. Suitably hung over by the time of the important meeting - first impressions are important after all!
One of the problems they found with the A380 was unpredicted fatigue of some of the airframe components. When designers look at airframe fatigue, they use what is called Crack Growth and years of Static, Fatigue, K1C and Fracture Toughness tests give them an immense catalogue of data to look at, all sort of generic. The A380 airframe underwent a huge programme of tests on what was called the Iron Bird which was gauged up with recording equipment (our german colleagues at work provided the instrumentation) and underwent a series of ground tests and airbourne tests. This went well. I don't know the full ins and out of it but in flight, the airframes suffered unexpected issues. Did this lead to its early retirement? I don't know!
