I read an article about the Airbus A380 (Let’s call it an A380 from now on) and why the production of A380s ended. The article cited 2 reasons for end of production of A380s: Point-to-point transit is more common in aviation nowadays, which didn’t make sense for me because, in reality, most airlines (With the exception of some budget airlines) use hub-and-spoke transit instead; And the fact that the A380 is a quadjet, which makes because twinjets are cheaper for airlines and ETOPS exist. With both the A380 and the Boeing 747 out of production, twinjets (The Airbus A350 and the Boeing 777X in particular) have taken over and they sadly, however, have only one deck, and that explains the title question. Sorry for the post being long
In: Other
One thing to address, most airlines use the hub and spoke model because they have to, not because they want to. In the past, if you wanted to fly internationally, you needed a massive plane. This forced airlines to use hubs, since people from many smaller cities wanted to go overseas, but not enough from each one for a giant plane. Newer planes like the A321neo and 787 help this problem by giving you range with a smaller size.
For the reason why double deckers planes are so rare, they are much less aerodynamic than longer, single floor planes. The 747 was given a second floor just to accommodate a cargo door in the nose, an idea Boeing had to make repurposing them as cargo planes easier. The A380 has one because it was designed for airlines that are completely dedicated to the hub and spoke model, like Singapore and Emirates. When your passenger traffic isn’t even split between a few hubs, a huge plane would make more sense. But with extended range planes making it possible to fly from Europe to Asia nonstop for less, this business model isn’t as profitable as it used to be.
Latest Answers