It's like I said earlier, there is only room for ONE superjumbo in the industry. If Boeing AND Airbus had built A380-sized planes then neither would be profitable.
The A380 development costs were something like £8bn. IIRC a brand new 747 retails for around £30M nowadays. As you can see, to return a profit you need to sell a LOT of planes!
I don't know what the 747 cost to develop, but it has been flying for nearly 40 years now. Not bad for a plane that was originally designed to carry cargo only! How many 747s have been sold?
Now, I am not saying they will sell as many A380s as they did 747s. Quite likely the opposite (less planes required to shift as many passengers, air travel might decline and so on). However, Boeing has already found that planned future developments of the 747 are falling on deaf ears to airline execs who want to buy the A380 instead.
Nothing returns a profit immediately. How many A380s have been sold so far? At what cost? Obviously there won't be a profit just yet. But, if the design life is anything like that of the 747 then it
will return a profit.
Dont get to excited just yet, the yanks were going to build something similar but then changed their mind and went for a medium haul plane instead, something swayed their opinion, so either they have dropped a boo boo or the Europiens have.
Different market. In the UK you are seldom more than 50 miles from an international airport. If you are, you probably live out in the sticks. So what you do when you visit the UK is to fly into Heathrow, Birmingham, Leeds etc. and then take a train or a hirecar to where you are going. The same is true throughout Europe.
But, that wouldn't really work too well in the US. You would often be faced with either having to drive or train 400 miles after a transatlantic flight, or have 747s touching down in "local" airports! Neither is particularly logical. So, you come into the big "Hub" airports and then take what is basically a flying bus to a more local airport (on a "spoke").
I have also read some scaremongering (on US websites) about the size of the A380 being too great for current airports. That's a load of balls. The size of the A380 is pretty much exactly the upper limits set in place by the aviation authorities, and also maximum ground pressure (weight of the beast divided by the footprint of the tyres) will also all be designed to conform. Also the take off and landing rolls will come within the set limits so you WON'T need to add an extra mile to the runway.
Gates have to be redesigned slightly due to the two-deck configuration, but that is not a major problem as they are always being overhauled and jigged about. Heathrow T5 is being built with A380 support from the outset.
If you can fly the Antonov An-225 to pretty much any major airport then believe me, the relatively lightweight A380 will be no problem!
