Today’s order of another 32 Airbus A380s by Emirates is about as many of the giant jets as it would need to operate all of its current or approved flights between Australia and New Zealand and its Dubai hub.
Or put another way, when Emirates has 90 A380s in service, for argument’s sake, by 2020, one third of them could be used in this market. Compared to the 20 A380s minimum that Qantas will be flying, or somewhere in excess of 15 which could by then be deployed by Singapore Airlines on its Australia-Europe services.
A Qantas A380 at Sydney, but will it be outnumbered by Emirates by 2020? photo by James Morgan
It takes three A380s to service a daily frequency to London from any Australian city. In the case of Emirates, a doubling of traffic but a constant market share between carriers in the next ten years would require it to use the A380s for all of its major frequencies.
That would be thrice daily from Sydney and Melbourne each, double daily from Brisbane, and as it has the rights, a daily from Adelaide and of course a daily from Perth.
That is about 27 high utilisation A380s, plus three spares for maintenance rotation.
Looking at Singapore Airlines’ highest usage of 747s and A380s from Australia to date, we could expect in a doubling of demand but constant market shares, at least double daily A380s from each of Sydney and Melbourne, and dailies from Brisbane and Perth.
Of course market share between the carriers will not be constant. If recent years are any guide, Qantas will shrink and Emirates and Singapore Airlines will grow, although Jetstar A380s cannot be excluded from the possibilities. And by 2020, Singapore Airlines and Emirates will be trading fully depreciated or well used A380s from the early deliveries for newer more efficient A380s, just as Qantas and other 747 operators churned their early classic jumbos for newer more efficient versions of the same line.
A lot of conventional wisdom says this cannot happen. But it was conventional wisdom in the early 60s that the 48 seat Vickers Viscounts of TAA, and the Douglas DC-6Bs of Ansett-ANA, were as large as airliners would be in Australia.
Even in the mid 80s, it was established wisdom that Sydney Airport wouldn’t grow much beyond 9-10 million passengers a year, compared to circa 30 million a year today. The idea that Qantas Cityflyer jets with over 250 seats might fly every 15 minutes between the major east coast capitals in peak hours would have been absurd.
There are of course, all sorts of factors, some of them very obvious, like fuel, and emissions, that suggest the future may be very different and non-geometric when it comes to growth, contraction, or the consequences of 1.3 billion people in China taking their place in the sun, if they can see the sun.
Which is why as a corollary of the Emirates ambitions, and similar projections, the race for non fossil-carbon releasing fuels, and drastic reductions in fuel burn, to as little as one third the levels of today as NASA studies recently discussed, is so intense in aerospace companies.
While the political engineering of solutions to fossil carbon emissions stutters, there is behind the latent demand for air transport, a realisation that more of the ‘same’ isn’t going to work. It has to be more of something that puts coal and oil out of business. For fuelling jets, ships and power stations. Or else.
10 Comments
It will be interesting to see how global airports handle adeqate terminal provisions for a significant expansion in operational fleets of the A380, as in many cases it means sacrificing an adjacent parking bay to accomodate the 80 meter wing span.
With the capacity entitlements enjoyed by Emirates, SIA and other Asian/Mid-East airlines, I wonder what benefits they bring to Australia at the expense of the national carrier? No one can tell me that there is such demand for Australia/UAE traffic to justify Emirates’ triple daily ex Sydney and Melbourne and double daily ex Brisbane and Perth, not to mention the benefits they gain by adding New Zealand extensions ex Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Emirates offer 20,125 seats a week ex Australia for Dubai.
The same arguments can be made against SIA, Cathay and Malaysian. What goes through the thought processes of the boffins in Canberra who negotiate these agreements?
Having first travelled by Emirates A380 recently, I am very dubious regarding its success. Firstly, I ponder how it got certified, especially regarding emergency evacuation criteria with pretty cramped seating in the 10 across economy configuration. Secondly, this high volume transportation necessitates boarding commencing about an hour before take-off and disembarkation, immigrations/customs clearance and baggage collection (at Sydney) takes about another hour after having been on board for 14 or so hours. All up, not a very appealing proposition for travellers. B747 and B777 are probably the upper capacity limits for more comfortable travel and particularly concerning safety considerations.
In regards to Bushrangers concerns regarding A380 evacuation it would appear to be unfounded, as the certification test was conducted successfully evacuating 873
pax in 90 seconds with only half the 16 emergency exit doors open and most airlines are operating with around 550 pax with all the exit doors available. http://stagev4.airbus.com/en/presscentre/pressreleases/pressreleases_items/06_03_26_a380_evacuation_test.html
“pretty cramped seating”?
I’ve travelled on both EK and SQ’s A380s and the space inside the economy cabin eclipses any other aircraft, particularly EK’s 10 abreast 777s. On almost all aircraft, if you manage to get yourself a window seat you can sleep against with your head rested against the window. Luxurious. This cannot be done on the A380 because there is a remarkably large gap between the seat and the window. If the person next to you is nice/already asleep, you might be able to sleep on their shoulder.
The only concern is when EK starts this inevitable capacity invasion, how will existing infrastructure at SYD cope with triple daily EK, double-daily SQ, who knows how many QF/JQ, MH, EY, BA, TG, QR A380s whose operators will (might) want to put them on a SYD rotation. This is obviously a few years down the track, but evidently so is any development at Sydney Airport.
Ken,
Indeed, I imagine Mr Joyce is increasingly concerned about the expansion of Middle Eastern carriers into Australia. Not only is each one (EK, EY, QR) throwing down a challenge to other airlines around the world, but they are increasingly throwing each other down the gauntlet. The size of each carrier’s order backlog is borderline ridiculous. They seem to be operating in a world of their own, apparently immune to financial crises, natural shocks, etc. that cripple other airlines. Emirates grew its capacity 14% in April, when that unpronounceable Icelandic volcano wreaked havoc around Europe and the North Atlantic. Again, such growth in those conditions is ridiculous. Emirates is hungry and it has money in the bank. And unfortunately for QF, it likes the look of the Aus/NZ market.
One benefit to QF is that it will be forced to innovate its offering. Of course, this ‘benefit’ debatable depending on how you look at it. But as a keen flier, it will benefit me. If it fails to do this, expect to see increased leverage of QF’s FFP, probably some Jetstar A380s and definitely further expansion in Singapore, where QF can come closer to matching some of the competitive advantages of Emirates. Namely, better geography, lower taxes, more advanced infrastructure, access to lower cost inputs and an international workforce, a higher-growth regional market that is favourable with tourists and commerce alike with over a billion people within 4 hours of flight time, etc. Unfortunately for Qantas, it will only be able to enjoy 49% of any growth here.
It looks like the main attraction of Emirates and Etihad is that they provide a direct connection (with a nice stopover) to many main cities in Europe without going through Heathrow (why would you fly about 2 hours longer to London, fight your way through the airport and fly back another 2 hours?). Also the flights are cheaper that way.
In response to David Klein and jack504.
I was employed with international airlines on 6 occasions, mainly in flight operations training, and participated in some carefully managed evacuation demonstrations, all involving company employees who had been specially briefed. These groups did not include aged, infirm, children/infants and all participants had a pretty good grasp of the English language.
I challenge whether it would be possible to safely evacuate an average group of 550 multi-national passengers from an A380 in 90 seconds even where all escape slides functioned on level ground let alone in more extreme circumstances of blocked exits due to fire on one side or if ditching in the sea. The panic factor must also be considered.
10 abreast economy seating is unsatisfactory on any of the wide-bodied types. Emirates A380 has a seat width between armrests of 45cms (18ins) with seat pitch of 85cms (34ins) and their B777 is probably similar which might suffice for pretty small people on shorter duration flights but not for taller and wider people at all. It is akin to cattle truck loading.
Unless business class travel happens to be affordable, we will henceforth be very selective toward seating width/pitch and possibly go for staged flying (of say 8 hour legs) rather than the high capacity long duration flights with stretched loading and disembarkation processes at either end of trips.
Hello Bushranger,
The evacuation procedure certainly is slightly artificial, but you cannot
have death or major injury during such a testrun for certification. It would
be completely unacceptable to have this performed under “real conditions”,
maybe even lighting a fire in the cabin and some paraphlegics on board?
But certification is done on these premises for all new airframes.
It is a valid requirement that allows some performance comparison.
Your reservations thusly apply to all certified planes around the world.
Or none. As a professed professional in the trade I am surprised you bring
it up at all.
On 26 March 2006 the A380 underwent evacuation certification in Hamburg, Germany. With 8 of the 16 exits blocked, 853 passengers and 20 crew left the aircraft in 78 seconds, less than the 90 seconds required by certification standards.
couldn’t find any numbers for the b777 but for the 747 it doesn’t read all that much better, actually sound like a rainy day:
One important test involved evacuation of 560 volunteers from a cabin mock-up via the plane’s emergency chutes. The first full-scale evacuation took two and a half minutes instead of the maximum of 90 seconds mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration, and several volunteers were injured. Subsequent test evacuations achieved the 90-second goal but caused more injuries. Most problematic was evacuation from the aircraft’s upper deck; volunteer passengers, instead of using a conventional slide, escaped by using a harness attached to a reel.