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
It’s not efficient to increase the capacity by increasing just the height. There is more to consider.
Double deckers have doubled the passenger space without doubling the cargo space so it’s difficult to get all the luggage in. Believe it or not, airlines make money off of cargo as well as passengers. And cargo variants of passenger aircraft are often important to aircraft sales, and double deckers (at least the A380) aren’t practical to be converted into cargo aircraft.
Double deckers don’t usually have a round cross section which complicates the pressurization system.
Double deckers have a larger cross section contributing to aerodynamic drag and therefore efficiency.
With enough resources and government bribery you could probably make a 747 or A380 variant with two engines. Modern engines have enough power to make it work. The problem is simply that double deckers are not practical regardless of how many engines they have.
Latest Answers