An A380 at Airbus Hamburg-Finkenwerder, cleverly imitating the current Virgin Who? paint job AIRBUS photo
An Airbus A380 is doing tests flights at a maximum take off weight off around 600 tonnes, according to the French aviation webzine Aeroweb.
While the article lacks depth and casts no light on the really interesting questions arising from this development, the tests do, among other things, put the A380 on course toward evolving into an airliner capable of carrying a commercially attractive multi-class payload non-stop in both directions between Melbourne or Sydney and London.
The article vaguely refers to the flights being 30 tonnes heavier than normal for an A380, and also refers to 600 tonnes, but in general A380s operate with a maximum takeoff weight a few tonnes shy of 560 tonnes, and to get to the higher figure quoted by Aeroweb you would have assume it is referring to the certified maximum weight for a rejected take off of 575 tonnes.
What the article does allow us to take as real however is that Airbus intends having a ‘close to’ 600 tonnes version of the A380 available as the standard delivered product in its current volumetric cabin size from sometime in 2013. Until recently the guidance was for a 573 tonnes upgrade, so we can infer there has been a further refinement in Airbus’s plans for the giant jet in the shorter term, perhaps aimed at clinching an order from Cathay Pacific, which has basically told it that unless it can do Hong Kong-New York non-stop they will won’t do the deal.
It is inconceivable that Airbus will not have by then added other efficiency refinements to the airframe, as it and Boeing do all the time for their range of airliners, meaning that in 2013 a new-standard A380 with a fuel capacity more than 11 per cent higher than at present will be able to fly a full payload non-stop between say Hong Kong and New York, or Dubai and Los Angeles, and maybe Perth-London, which is a route where diversionary fuel requirements at the Perth end are a real pain, so, maybe not. It could, stress could, mean that Airbus is pitching the post 2013 A380 as having a full payload range capability close to that of an Airbus A340-500 0r Boeing 777-200LR, but without either of those smaller jets being fitted with the auxiliary fuel tanks they could take.
The A340-500 has operated the world’s longest range non-stop regular service between Singapore and Newark (for New York) since 2004. Some of those flights are airborne for 18 hours 30 minutes depending on the route chosen and the headwinds encountered.
Since Qantas still has A380s on order for delivery in or after 2013, those jets could operate its new Sydney-Dallas Fort Worth flights without the westbound stop in Brisbane that Qantas will have to make using the Boeing 747-400ERs deployed on the route, and carry in terms of current configurations, around 144 more passengers.
But let’s not confuse commercially attractive with operationally attractive. Non-stop 20 hour flights between Melbourne or Sydney and London do not make much sense if for the sake of saving one or two hours in trip time the fuel burn per passenger is unaffordable in a world where fuel is somewhere north of $150 dollars per barrel of refined aviation grade kerosene, or the biofuel blends likely to play an increasing role in aviation by the middle of this decade.
The most fuel efficient flights will still be those which land somewhere like Beijing, on the shortest practicable routing, which is across northern China and Siberia.
The increased weight A380 flying trials now doesn’t even take full advantage of the basic design of the giant jet in terms of unused fuel carrying space.
Using Airbus figures, a 600 tonnes maximum take off weight A380 would not use all of the currently unused space in the central wing area for fuel, and would be maybe 20-25 tonnes short of the current lifting potential of a wing and general structure which was clearly over engineered with a view to allowing future ‘stretches’ of the fuselage as well as higher payload/range options.
The A380 in those regards has a lot of potential that a 600 tonne 2013 edition would not fully realise.
The two current engine designs for the A380, from Rolls-Royce and the Engine Alliance of GE and Pratt and Whitney, are intended to be upgradable to the higher outputs required by a heavier version, fingers (cough) crossed.
10 Comments
I don’t think the economics of a 20h flight work out, against the discomfort in economy.
a 24h-26h flight via an LCC is not sufficiently ‘slower’ to dis-incentivise, and the break time in Dubai, Changi, Incheon, Bankok, HongKong is on-sold as an advantage.
For business, I can see it. For premium economy, the new business-lite, I can see it. So, a 380 which was all high-end paying customers, I can see it. But the 500+ jam-them-in’s I cannot see it, unless there is a massive price differential against slower/cheaper flights
I have done 16h flights. The additional increment over 14 is not high, but 14 is close to my tolerance limit. a 20h flight you are looking at 2 sleep phases, and at least 3 if not 4 meal offerings.
Crew costs surely have to rise because you’ve exceeded single crew timelines.
I find your proposal of the least-time route via Beijing more compelling. I’d love to see the timing differences if we used alternate hubs to Changi, Bangkok, HongKong and Dubai. I did BNE-NRT-LHR once, a nice route, but a 5h layover made it suboptimal.
A break on a one-stop flight to Europe in economy is highly desirable, and the trans Pacific non-stops in economy are a real test of stamina, or of one’s ability to assume the coma-condition. It is a blow however when the deals are cheapest to Europe if you don’t break the journey with a day, or even a half day, in Singapore, where the chance to have a long soak and a decent sleep and a change of clothes makes the trip so much more pleasant. There are exceptions like those you refer to, where the airline induces you to take that stop-over in Incheon for example, so shopping around is very important, as is a bit of the lateral thinking you recommend.
I can see premium economy working (at the right price) on a very long flight sector on an A380 where there is an opportunity to use social space, or a bar, to move about more than you can in smaller single deck designs.
If I read the signals from Airbus correctly, these higher weight versions of the A380 do not have the tiny market for non-stop flights to Europe from Australia in mind as the main use, but rather much higher volume 13-16 hour flights.
For example, assuming demand really grows as forecast by around 5.9 per cent across the South Pacific, a higher gross weight A380, including one that is stretched only by 8 metres or so in cabin volume, can gain around 150 seats or more over current possible configurations and further lower cost per seat per kilometre.
So the bigger jets would be applicable on existing A380 routes as well as say Guangzhou-New York, which is beyond anything but a 777-200LR or A345 today, and at a much higher if not punitive cost per seat/distance basis.
It does go against conventional wisdom, but if we see anything like the growth rates forecast for the greater Asia Pacific come to pass, the need for a competitor to a second or third model evolution of the A380 may become compelling.
The original architecture of the A380, which is designed with 1000 passenger loads in mind in coming decades, would finally be fully supported by much wider demand than we see today.
Generally speaking, conventional wisdom has never been equal to real demand in aviation over intervals of two to three decades if we indulge in the luxury of hindsight.
@ggm 11.27 am.
I agree, in as much as I am competent on several of your points.
Business travellers may be trapped by inflexible attitudes though at least some of them have more flexibilities if they want to take them. As a scientist usually flying on “business” (not in business class I should add) I would always include time/stopovers to allow refreshment or sightseeing (and sometimes last-minute swotting/revision of Powerpoint etc), though it was depressing to see how many of my colleagues were unwilling to do that based purely on convention of not “wasting” worktime etc. (which of course was almost totally false–just the intimidation of being seen to be at your desk even if you were a zombie after one of those long flights).
These days with ubiquitous online facilities, some business people even claim that they get more work done in a airport lounge than at their workplace. (Credibly IMO, the more underlings you have the more true it is.)
In fact in my experience you can often include a stopover without any sacrifice at all and gain the time-catchup etc. The Oz-Europe route via HK is an example, where you can have a 6 hour stopover and catch the midnight flight to Europe that gets in early am. I suspect it is similar for the newer routes via Dubai & Abu Dhabi. Europe to US west coast I got in the habit of overnighting at Venice Beach (wonderful offseason and just 30 minutes $10 shuttle to LAX, other than deadening airport hotels it has to be the most convenient place in LA and certainly the most relaxing; it is more than 10y since I did it so I suppose the days of $40 rooms in the Cadillac hotel right on the beach are gone).
But then I am not typical and find a lot of people obsessed with “quickest” most direct flights to wherever (even rushing to London, one of the most depressing travel experiences/arrivals available!). (Incidentally IMO Beijing does not fulfill my criteria for a good stopover –not really that interesting if you have already done it, and you cannot do much in short time unlike HK which one never tires of.)
So ggm your “5 h layover made it suboptimal” is the opposite for me: it needs to be at least 6 h and of course the stopover has to have excellent transport links into the city. As in HK a 6h stopover (even without any sleep) is a complete refresher, presumably partly because you actually sleep easily on the next night leg.
The other issue is catering, they cant hold 20 – 22 hours of food carts, also the waste tanks for the toilets
Ben, I see you covered some of my ground (or the other way around). I think you must be right about “but rather much higher volume 13-16 hour flights”.
But the effort to turn a long flight experience closer to a TGV experience (walking/lounging space, bars, wifi etc) will probably never come to pass, at least for economy, because the space is just too valuable and there are too many people. And “spare” space will be used for first and business because they pay for it. I can zen-out for those 13-16 h flights but any longer and the cabins get pretty awful and I am not convinced the air does not deteriorate beyond “simply awful” for even shorter flights to “atrocious”. It is no coincidence that so many come down with some flu or URTI within 24h of arrival.
Another factor you have not discussed with these A380s is how are the terminals handling them? As usual I suppose the newer airports in Beijing, HK, Shanghai, Singapore are doing fine but elsewhere? I remember my first London arrival which was already 10 y after 747s were flying but the luggage carousel was merely adequate for previous gen aircraft, and so it was utter shambles. Now we are talking 800-1000 arrivals in one bang. Sydney, LAX, JFK, LHR? Awful to contemplate.
Also, for those XL flights, for people like me it is a big boon if the airlines treat an overnighter as “in transit”. Again HK (Cathay Pacific, possibly the only one to offer it?) is good; it might even extend to 36 h if I recall. It is great to not have to deal with checked luggage on these brief stopovers–not just the senseless lugging around of it but all the wasted time (& $) of either putting it in Baggage at the airport or having to return to a hotel etc to collect it before proceeding to airport on return etc. Seems to me that this has to be a benefit in efficiency for the airlines, avoiding wasted check-in times and re-checking luggage etc.
Haven’t done the A380 turns anywhere but Sydney, Auckland and Singapore, and must say they were fine. Certainly a lot better than deplaning from a Cityflyer 767 or 737-800 through a single door out of or into a jet with narrower aisles. Three big doors in use at once on an A380 is a breeze, two is OK, and one, which I have done, was fortuitously a half empty flight.
Facilities wise, it is hard to distinguish inadequate baggage systems per se from the issue with how many arrive at once on one flight because there are always multiple flights being handled. For example, Australian domestic flights are just about full all the time. The other day I was in T2 and it was a shambles just in the space of four gates which would have represented most likely 1440 passengers in less space than T1 has for an A380 because each gate was simultaneously loading and unloading four full 737-800s.
Right, but I suppose at the moment and for a few years yet, there are not enough A380s flying to make an impact. (Wotif each gate was simultaneously loading and unloading four full A380-stretch?)
Incidentally I will eagerly travel by TGV from HK to Europe when China builds it! Yeah, I will be waiting as long as for when Australia gets its first TGV! And Sydney its second airport (maybe both together!).
The beloved Star Ferry experience suddenly springs to mind.
The concept of “social space” is clearly one where authorities, airlines and passengers all have very different opinions. Passengers would love the idea, especially those in Y and, to a lesser extent, W class, as it gives you an out from your tiny seat, even for just 20mins. Airlines would (as earlier mentioned) rather cram in more seats, or put that space behind the impenetrable curtain partition of the premium classes. And authorities apparently don’t want anyone on an aircraft to be out of their seats any more than is absolutely necessary… On both my inbound AND outbound flights to LAX in Feb this year on the QF A388, there was an announcement as part of the safety briefing that in accordance with U.S. Policy, passengers were not allowed to congregate in groups, especially around the toilets (and on a side note, of the 13 flights I did to, around and from the U.S. In Feb, it was only the QF intl segments that had this TSA warning. Not even my AA flight from Montreal to DFW had this announcement). The bar/lounge/cafe social space concept will never happen from what I can see.
As for the traffic handling issue of 800pax A380′s in the future, while my experience wasn’t representative of most travelers (a month in the U.S. with only a carry on bag, so I skipped baggage claim in LAX and SYD), the biggest issue in both ports with handling of a fully loaded A380 was timing of landing slots with other large Intl flights. 3x fully loaded 747′s from China and Korea followed by our A380 killed the inefficient-on-their-good-days LAX customs and 105mins in line was the result. SYD also struggled with customs lines coming back into Australia. Why these airports allow 800-1300 tired passengers to descend all at once onto 15-20 customs officers at 7am baffles me…
The A380 operates now at 569 tonnes from LAX to Melbourne. Assuming that the payload remains the same, going to a take off weight of 600 tonnes, would give 31 tonnes more fuel at the start of the journey. But, at the other end, that 31 tonnes would have been reduced to about 18 tonnes, simply by the extra burn required to carry the extra weight. That in turn converts to about 775 nm of extra range. Usefully, that would be almost exactly what would be needed to allow DFW-SYD.
My bet would be that when the aircraft does go to 600 tonnes, that that extra weight will consist of 150 passengers, and simply the fuel needed to carry them the same distance that the aircraft goes now.
The 380 take off performance application will already work for a 600 tonne take off weight, and even with the current engines, it is achievable at Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, and London (assuming nil wind, and 15 degrees).
HKG to JFK is only marginally longer than the LAX-MEL route. The biggest problem there isn’t so much the range, but the simple fact that JFK would have to be one of the worst airports that I have ever operated into. Because of the way they manage the airspace, holding can start hours before you arrive. In the many times I’ve operated there (and only LAX-JFK…so a short sector), I’ve rarely used the planned fuel, and figures around 10 to 15 tonnes extra were the norm on the 747. I really can’t seem them willingly accepting an aircraft that simply does not have the fuel on arrival to handle the world class dicking about that ATC will give it. Now add in the fact that JFK is a nightmare to taxi around, even in the much smaller 747, and I’m really left wondering why anyone would want to fly one there.