Lufthansa recently unretired its A340-600 fleet and I loved my long haul flight on one of them a couple of months ago. So smooth. Catch them while still around.
I flew a Lufthansa A340 to Cape Town. Very nice plane.
They have quite a quirky feature: there are toilets in the cargo hold, with steps leading down to them [0]. I liked it - the area is good for stretching your legs and it was a bit of a social hub.
I had neither noticed that the many times I flew one, nor known that was meant to be a characteristic of them, but ChatGPT agrees with you here. I think I’d still rather take the better pressurised cabin of the newer models tho
Four-engine aircraft are wildly fuel inefficient, this is going away like the aircraft it was designed to compete against: The 747. Customers want smaller aircraft point-to-point travel, not larger spoke–hub travel, and airlines want cheap fuel costs.
Plus regulatory agencies have decided two-engine aircraft can make long over-ocean trips (ETOPS) if they show the FAA a good quality spreadsheet and perform a few trivial tests.
"Customers want smaller aircraft point-to-point travel, not larger spoke–hub travel, and airlines want cheap fuel costs."
Who are the customers? Customers want cheap flights. Many people in the world can't even afford a plane ticket. And the Airbus A380 Stretch could have carried 1000 passengers. Lets see, I think it is too early for a verdict.
And once business travelers largely establish the flight patterns, travelers for tourism or other personal reasons largely pay the costs that those patterns lead to.
The A380 may have been too early. The stretched version with new engines and >1000 seats could have changed things. Think about highly price sensitive customers. Iranians flying to Mecca or Indians to somewhere or Chinese. Don't think American businessmen.
I said the verdict is not final because things can change:
So if countries start banning short haul domestic flights then the hub model may come back, at least in some countries with decent train transport. Combine this with the price sensitive customers I mentioned, and then I stay by my prediction. The verdict is not final.
Point-to-point can lower cost as well. Cheaper to take off from a smaller airport and less fuel used since you skip an expensive take-off from the hub.
The hassle in incomparable. There are certainly exceptions but almost always the smaller the airport the easier and faster it is to get through security. The easier and cheaper it is to park. You can just call an Uber from the sidewalk in front of the terminal instead of walking to some obscure pickup spot 3/4 of a mile away.
Going through small 5-gate airports is a dream as long as they're appropriately staffed at security, which is not just a small airport problem. Going through living nightmares like Denver makes me seriously consider sepukku.
If both flights are nonstop I'd probably pay 20% more for the smaller airport even if the flight itself is longer.
The only reason point-to-point is successful is because regional airports are cheaper than larger airports.
By economy of scale, larger airports should be cheaper. The reason they're not is that regional airports are heavily subsidized.
If air travel subsidies would spontaneously end tomorrow, we'd see a return to the hub- and spoke model, more A380 flights, less 737-MAX8/A320neo demand, lower air travel emissions, and better competitiveness for trains.
> "And the Airbus A380 Stretch could have carried 1000 passengers."
Ticket prices have little to do with how many passengers a plane can carry at once. The A380 failed in large part because it didn't produce lower per-passenger costs than multiple smaller aircraft on the same route. More importantly the hub-and-spoke model isn't necessarily cheaper than direct flights, since a connecting passenger incurs additional costs (extra mileage flown, meaning extra fuel burn, extra employee expense, and much more fixed costs like airport fees and ground handling)
There are situations where a larger plane makes sense - the Japanese domestic flight industry experiences extreme passenger volume, and landing/takeoff slots are constrained, that it makes sense to fly larger planes.
But even that demand can be satisfied by large widebody heavies that aren't the A380, like the A350, 777, or 787.
Super-heavies like the A380 only make sense on routes where the passenger volume is so extreme, and takeoff/landing slots so constrained, that you must carry > 1000 passengers in a single slot. There are almost no route pairs like this in the world.
The problem with the A380 is airlines didn't need enough of them in order to have enough of them. Thus they couldn't achieve any economy of scale in maintenance and spares. Only Emirates/Singapore did and have been very successful with their fleets as a result.
It’s such a bummer that the A380 got canned. I flew on Singapore Air’s A380 out of LAX a few times and its ridiculous size made for the largest and most comfortable economy seats I’ve ever booked. Can’t even imagine how nice the premium/business seats on those things were.
One of the best and most memorable experiences I've had was sleeping in Premium Economy on the upper deck of a BA A380 back from San Francisco (from a work trip). It's quiet and the ride quality comfortable. It's a shame the food on that trip didn't make up for it.
The A380 is one of my favourite aircraft. I never flew on a 747 and likely never will now, so it's the next best thing I've got for a two-deck experience.
Its not really true that by definition four-engine planes are more fuel inefficient per seat. A A380 with new engines on a per seat bases isn't that inefficient at all.
It is just a question of if you can fill the space efficiently.
That is why some of the Hub-and-Spoke Airlines are streaming for a A380NEO
Yes, but in the real world many Hub-And-Spoke Airlines are very successful. And with airport extensions and new builds not going up as fast as travel demand, Hub-And-Spoke isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It will become more important.
> if they show the FAA a good quality spreadsheet and perform a few trivial tests.
Its not that easy. There is a reason private jets still have 3 engines, getting certified is to expensive.
I remember taking the EWR-SIN flight back in the 2000s in both premium economy and business class. The first time was an experience - such a long flight. Previously I'd have to connect in Europe/Asia. Taking it when it was all business class was pretty cool. ~100 people on such a big plane.
It's not about the aircraft, just the engines. Engines got so much more reliable through the 80's and 90's that it made more sense (though regulation lagged a bit) to do those long haul flights with larger twin engine configurations, which are inherently more efficient (bigger fans spin faster on the outside enabling higher bypass at the same RPM).
The aircraft itself was otherwise mostly common with the A330, which still sells well enough (and is being replaced by the evolved A350).
I'm glad to have experienced flying in the retro futuristic 747 but the Lufthansa A340-600 felt like a proper top of the line spaceship. I still can't fathom that twin engine is now deemed safe for long haul flights. I always feel uneasy when crossing the Atlantic with one.
Why? Any modern twin-engine plane can operate just fine on a single engine. Dual engine failure is extremely rare, especially at altitude - most of the time it's birds like the USA1549 at much lower altitudes.
Yeah, I know all of that plus the ecological / economic side.. it still irks me. Maybe I've seen just too many failing redundant disk arrays in my career.
You should work on that. Generalizing tech/CS concepts to the physical world is a common shortcoming I see among SWE's. They just don't understand concepts of variability in the real world or experimental physical science.
Modern engines are ridiculously reliable and ridiculously powerful. That means they don’t fail frequently. And when they do, one is enough to limp to safety [1].
Yes, I know all of that and we do have the empirical data to support the safety argument. Still there's just too much efficiency mindset at play for my taste. I prefer big buffers, especially in mission critical scenarios.
But then you still probably choose to drive your car every day, despite that doing so is many, many times more risky than flying over the ocean in a twinjet.
Human preferences ultimately shape these marketplaces, but humans are fundamentally terrible at evaluating risk, especially for extremely negative but highly unlikely outcomes (see also: terrorist attacks, home invasions, etc).
Personally I minimize time spent in automobiles, whether driving or as a passenger, precisely because it’s so dangerous. My risk of sudden death is drastically lower on days that I don’t spend any time inside a vehicle moving at high speeds on the highway.
How much of a typical transatlantic route (say, London -> New York) is within 75 miles of a safe landing zone? I assume routes are chosen to optimize for this, to some degree.
> How much of a typical transatlantic route (say, London -> New York) is within 75 miles of a safe landing zone
ETOPS 180 means 180 minutes from a diversion airport. At 737 speeds that could be 1,300 miles.
I don’t think two modern engines have ever failed in a way that wouldn’t have taken out four, e.g. the Air Transat flight, where again, having more dead engines’ weight and drag would have reduced glide distance.
So called “accelerate-go” versus “accelerate-stop”. It is conditional, and not limited to these two models. They need to accelerate to a specific airspeed based on loading, temperature, and usable runway length. Prior to that airspeed, engine failure means abort. At and after reaching that speed, takeoff continues.
4-holers can cross the Atlantic with an engine out and barely notice. See this Emirates A380 that flew from New York and had to shutdown an engine over Newfoundland. OK it didn't fly all the way to Dubai it had to divert. To Kuwait!
The safety calculus isn't quite as simple as "more engines = safer". Having more engines also increases the chances of one of the engines failing, and engine failure can be quite immediately dangerous to the aircraft if it's uncontained. (You don't want to get hit by a detached fan blade.)
Light twin piston airplanes, likwise double the odds of engine failure, but due to the dramatic loss of excess thrust, the good engine actually becomes the problem, e.g. Vmc limitation.
The assymetric thrust force can exceed control surface force needed for controlled flight. The solution is never go below Vmc airspeed, but if you do it requires immediate power reduction. And that has consequences that often inhibits committing to the proper action prior to loss of control. In most cases power reduction commits the pilot to landing sooner than preferred, and in a likely suboptimal location.
Per the usual trope-y statistic: if you want a safe trip for your vacation, don't drive to the airport (which would be the riskiest leg of the journey).
Crossing the Atlantic generally isn't a problem, most routes take you close to land. It's crossing the Pacific, like from US to Hawaii, that is a bit cagey.
777 as well, except for the fact that MH370 where the pilot deliberately brought down the plane and the other one was shot down by Russian Separatists in Ukraine.
Once two engines were found to be reliable enough (with sufficient contingency planning) then >2 engine planes (including three-engine like the MD-11) were not really needed.
One of the features of the A340 was that it was available with the same engines as the A320s. That made a „one engine for the entire fleet“ policy possible for airlines. Turned out, fuel costs were more important. Another fun fact: The two-engine A330 has the same fuselage, only the wings and engines are different. Airbus offers now a new, more fuel efficient engine option for the A330, which still sells and is still in production.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadThey have quite a quirky feature: there are toilets in the cargo hold, with steps leading down to them [0]. I liked it - the area is good for stretching your legs and it was a bit of a social hub.
[0] https://onemileatatime.com/insights/lufthansa-a340-cargo-hol...
I had neither noticed that the many times I flew one, nor known that was meant to be a characteristic of them, but ChatGPT agrees with you here. I think I’d still rather take the better pressurised cabin of the newer models tho
Plus regulatory agencies have decided two-engine aircraft can make long over-ocean trips (ETOPS) if they show the FAA a good quality spreadsheet and perform a few trivial tests.
Who are the customers? Customers want cheap flights. Many people in the world can't even afford a plane ticket. And the Airbus A380 Stretch could have carried 1000 passengers. Lets see, I think it is too early for a verdict.
This is a post about the A340, 747, DC-10 (3x engine), and A380 dying (or being already dead). What more verification do you need?
Airlines can and do charge higher air-fares for direct travel.
I said the verdict is not final because things can change:
France’s Plan To Ban Short-Haul Domestic Flights Wins Approval From European Commission https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2022/12/03/frances-...
So if countries start banning short haul domestic flights then the hub model may come back, at least in some countries with decent train transport. Combine this with the price sensitive customers I mentioned, and then I stay by my prediction. The verdict is not final.
Going through small 5-gate airports is a dream as long as they're appropriately staffed at security, which is not just a small airport problem. Going through living nightmares like Denver makes me seriously consider sepukku.
If both flights are nonstop I'd probably pay 20% more for the smaller airport even if the flight itself is longer.
By economy of scale, larger airports should be cheaper. The reason they're not is that regional airports are heavily subsidized.
If air travel subsidies would spontaneously end tomorrow, we'd see a return to the hub- and spoke model, more A380 flights, less 737-MAX8/A320neo demand, lower air travel emissions, and better competitiveness for trains.
The A380 is finished. Dead. Morte. Program over, and never made a profit.
It was a magnificent machine, that no one asked for.
The car that Homer designed, with wings.
This verdict was already decided, everyone went home, and the lights were switched off.
It was just to much, to soon with the wrong engines.
Ticket prices have little to do with how many passengers a plane can carry at once. The A380 failed in large part because it didn't produce lower per-passenger costs than multiple smaller aircraft on the same route. More importantly the hub-and-spoke model isn't necessarily cheaper than direct flights, since a connecting passenger incurs additional costs (extra mileage flown, meaning extra fuel burn, extra employee expense, and much more fixed costs like airport fees and ground handling)
There are situations where a larger plane makes sense - the Japanese domestic flight industry experiences extreme passenger volume, and landing/takeoff slots are constrained, that it makes sense to fly larger planes.
But even that demand can be satisfied by large widebody heavies that aren't the A380, like the A350, 777, or 787.
Super-heavies like the A380 only make sense on routes where the passenger volume is so extreme, and takeoff/landing slots so constrained, that you must carry > 1000 passengers in a single slot. There are almost no route pairs like this in the world.
The A380 is one of my favourite aircraft. I never flew on a 747 and likely never will now, so it's the next best thing I've got for a two-deck experience.
edit: a340s -> a380s
- cost per passenger, and
- number passengers passing per unit of time in airport.
Larger aircraft lose in cost per landing, and time slot length per landing, but when you count per passenger number they can do better.
Longest A340 has fewer seats than the longest 777
But I could see the a340 being the choice for shorter hops where fuel burn is less of a concern
It is just a question of if you can fill the space efficiently.
That is why some of the Hub-and-Spoke Airlines are streaming for a A380NEO
> Customers want smaller aircraft point-to-point travel, not larger spoke–hub travel
Yes, but in the real world many Hub-And-Spoke Airlines are very successful. And with airport extensions and new builds not going up as fast as travel demand, Hub-And-Spoke isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It will become more important.
> if they show the FAA a good quality spreadsheet and perform a few trivial tests.
Its not that easy. There is a reason private jets still have 3 engines, getting certified is to expensive.
The aircraft itself was otherwise mostly common with the A330, which still sells well enough (and is being replaced by the evolved A350).
Partly why A350 didn't go quite as big as 777x.
Introducing Boeing’s latest innovation… ESOPS!
Modern engines are ridiculously reliable and ridiculously powerful. That means they don’t fail frequently. And when they do, one is enough to limp to safety [1].
[1] https://simpleflying.com/united-airlines-boeing-757-engine-l...
Human preferences ultimately shape these marketplaces, but humans are fundamentally terrible at evaluating risk, especially for extremely negative but highly unlikely outcomes (see also: terrorist attacks, home invasions, etc).
If the second one fails, you still have at least 75 miles [1]. (More engines would have actually hurt in that situation.)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236
ETOPS 180 means 180 minutes from a diversion airport. At 737 speeds that could be 1,300 miles.
I don’t think two modern engines have ever failed in a way that wouldn’t have taken out four, e.g. the Air Transat flight, where again, having more dead engines’ weight and drag would have reduced glide distance.
https://www.businesstraveller.com/forums/topic/ek-a380-flies...
Not exactly according to the rules but still.
Light twin piston airplanes, likwise double the odds of engine failure, but due to the dramatic loss of excess thrust, the good engine actually becomes the problem, e.g. Vmc limitation.
The assymetric thrust force can exceed control surface force needed for controlled flight. The solution is never go below Vmc airspeed, but if you do it requires immediate power reduction. And that has consequences that often inhibits committing to the proper action prior to loss of control. In most cases power reduction commits the pilot to landing sooner than preferred, and in a likely suboptimal location.
For the morbidly curious, this occurred on Delta Flight 1288:
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/written-in-metal-the-sto...
If one engine fails, you have another. If the second fails, you glide.
Since 1953, there have been less than 50 airline flights that have required gliding:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airline_flights_that_r...
Per the usual trope-y statistic: if you want a safe trip for your vacation, don't drive to the airport (which would be the riskiest leg of the journey).
There was a major crash in Canada a while ago, but even then, nobody died.
Take that, Boeing.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS
Once two engines were found to be reliable enough (with sufficient contingency planning) then >2 engine planes (including three-engine like the MD-11) were not really needed.
For those who don’t know, the acronym stands for Engines Turn or Passengers Swim.
It actually stands for: Extended-range Twin-engine Operations Performance Standards
and is a pretty logically laid out standard.