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
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You anwserd your own question. The anwser is because its cheaper/makes more money.
They arent going to build double decker planes just because “they are cool”, they would build /buy them if it would make them more profit.
Making really large engines is a pretty challenging task, and given that both the 747 and a380 have demonstrated that it’s pretty hard to consistently fill up a >400 passenger airplane (unless you’re running a mega hub in a really good location), it’s doubtful that any plane manufacturer or/and engine manufacturer would be willing to invest the resources into designing a super-large twinjet.
There are routes where massive planes make sense. Perth (Aus) to Heathrow? Sure, but these only run a few times a week. Most other flights are cheaper and more serviceable with smaller craft.
That on one hand suggests that big planes have a role, but when you consider that you need a whole separate line of maintenance infrastructure and personnel, and pilot and crew training for a niche aircraft, it’s not a great financial argument.
Let’s say that you’re in a small city in the US like Greensboro, North Carolina and you want to go to London. You can’t fly directly there so you’ll have to fly to New York first. You’ve got two options: Airline A flies an A380 but only once per day, which means you’ll have a 6 hour layover in New York. Airline B has two flights per day on A330s from New York to London, one of which leaves an hour and a half after you land from Greensboro. Which ticket would you prefer to book?
The airlines figured out that most consumers would choose Airline B in that scenario, and as a result now have shifted their operations to favor frequency on routes like New York to London instead of operating lots of seats on a single flight.
In addition to all that, airports need to make infrastructure upgrades to accommodate an A380 – extra jetways, larger boarding areas, etc. Because the A380 can only fly to the airports that can take it, it can’t be used as flexibly.
Something else that nobody mentioned yet is that with new advances in materials they are able to make planes longer which is cheaper than making a double decker
The larger aircraft aren’t that economical. They don’t have as much flexibility, and they’re not as efficient. It just comes down to money.
Though an interesting consideration is that it’s harder to evacuate a double-decker aircraft.
[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Helmut-Jungermann/publication/289252282_Emergency_Evacuation/links/568ae3a608ae1e63f1fbfeab/Emergency-Evacuation.pdf](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Helmut-Jungermann/publication/289252282_Emergency_Evacuation/links/568ae3a608ae1e63f1fbfeab/Emergency-Evacuation.pdf)
Why *would* a double-decker twinjet exist? That’s actually two separate questions: why would you want a twinjet that big, and if you had one why would you want it to be a double-decker?
The latter question is pretty easy to answer…you only want two decks if you’re *huge*…A380 huge. 747 only has the partial upper deck for freighter reasons (because of when it was originally designed, the industry assumed passenger traffic would all end up on supersonics and the 747 would be relegated mostly to freighter life). If you take that partial upper deck away, you get a 777/A350. And the market has proven that, with capable point-to-point twins, there is very little demand for passenger aircraft that large…total fleet at that scale is under 500.
So we don’t want *any* airplane that big anymore, so no more double deckers regardless of whether they’re twins or not.
And, thanks to ETOPS, you don’t want more than two engines unless you need it for thrust reasons. But we’ve gotten better about aerodynamics so we haven’t needed a larger thrust engine than the GE90-115B, which was developed ~20 years ago. Even the largest new twins (A350-1000, 777-9) don’t need that much thrust because their aero and structure are so much better. No airplane of feasible size needs more than two engines anymore.
Wider planes are better because the body can produce lift. Taller planes cannot.
We are more likely to see wide body planes than taller (double decker) planes because of this
This post seems like a weird AI generated one. For someone who doesn’t know a lot about jets you’re using some very specific language, and weirdly structured sentences.
If you’re talking about hub and spoke operations, ETOPS, twin jets etc, you’d have some understanding as to why planes like the 747 and A380 aren’t being actively developed right now.
If you’re genuine, and just copying a lot of words out of an article which you have a basic understanding of, and didn’t provide an answer to your question despite mentioning the A350, 777X. One of the answers is: Hub and spoke models will still continue to be important, not everyone wants to sit in economy for 20hours to fly to a destination. However, some routes have demand for planes that can fly that distance.
The trade off being – to fly that far you need an efficient plane. Typically size and fuel usage are your limiting factors. The A350, and 787 primarily are the planes which will fill those ultra long haul routes. They don’t fit as many people, but they have engines that can carry those planes the distance required with baggage.
Previously the A380, and 747 had to leave luggage behind on some routes when flying winds weren’t ideal. Dallas to Sydney for example couldn’t fly full, and even then consistently had to leave bags behind to ensure it had enough fuel for safety.
ETOPS is a thing which Qantas are working with regulators on for their Sydney to New York routes, by finding alternative solutions to the requirements to maintain safety but while being able to exceed the normal things.
Unfortunately, despite great demand now and pleas from carriers like Emirates for an A380neo (new engine option). Airbus won’t make one citing costs. The A380, is an absolute favourite amongst flyers but isn’t great for efficiency, as the engines it launched with were just before some big advances. A A380 today would have a great chance at being cost competitive, but to do so requires a lot of investment that makes that not viable for Airbus.
That at least is my understanding. Some bits may be outdated.
It would be too heavy.
The 777-9, soon to be the largest twinjet on the market, has an empty weight of around 400,000 pounds and a maximum take-off weight of 775,000 pounds. An aircraft with n engines needs to have enough power to take off with (n-1) engines, so that single engine has to push 775,000 pounds.
The A380-800 has an empty weight of 628,000 pounds and a MTOW of around 1,265,000 (!) pounds. If we took the 777-9’s engines, put them on an A380, and lost one engine’s power on takeoff, the remaining engine would be far too weak – or the A380 would be limited to a pitifully small load and short range.
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