What's wrong at Airbus? Will the A380 sink the ship?

[Pekka]

DanS, nah.. I mean it's partially true. The real truth is, I didn't add enough French bashing in it

Or EU 'governmentality'.

[Fake Boris]

[DanS]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Now, if it can take off in a small enough space that you could create a few dozen MORE airports in the chicago area (say, 10 more even) without a major cost, that might make a difference. If it takes less fuel to fly 20 of these than a 727, anyway (which would surprise me, but I guess that's probably the design spec).

Eclipse says that it can takeoff from virtually any airport, but I don't know enough to verify that fact. Here's the graph that the company provides.

By way of comparison, the local county airport where I grew up has a 5,000 foot runway and is roughly at sea level. About 100,000 live in the county.

[Pekka]

But it's the truth. Saying EU will lead any project is investors worst nightmare. EU does not understand investing. It likes to invest. In fact EU likes investing so much, that they never ask anything in return. Would you like to see techwear on dogs? We'll invest in a project that aims to put CPU on dogs brains. We don't actually want to see it, but we'll invest in it. We all know it's a stupid idea but we just like to invest. If the project crew just instead uses the money to... sit around and argue which language should be the main language used, well it's kind of fun too. Worthy of that money.

Number one rule is, if nothing is happening, invest more and hire more people to run the show. If there's no open spots, ... invent them! Or would we rather see those people unemployed? It's a win-win. People have jobs and we might even get a dog with CPU attached to its brain.

Of course the Russians already knew how to do it, the Americans didn't but knew it wasn't worth investing into and the Japanese already did it.

But in the name of Le Blonc Chemonux, we will have a dog with chips in his brain, or at least the project. And the plan was cool.. Italians kept the accounting, French was in charge for the customer relations and the interface (available only in French), Germans added human warmness into it and Iceland was in charge for throwing th big party when the project was to be announced succesful. Can't go wrong.

[snoopy369]

So basically it needs a half mile or more stil for takeoff, call it .5 mi² when you consider extra space and hangars and such. Hrm. That's a bit too far to build that many more airports in an urban setting ... clearing that much space would cost a fortune.

Now, the interesting part starts when you consider that presumably the FAA won't require the same passenger screening that you need for a 727. If you can imagine an air taxi that takes off every ten minutes from newark to NYC, say, and you just have to show up ten minutes early to board the plane? Or from BWI to Dulles [or whatever the near-downtown-DC airport is]?

[DanS]

In a neighboring town to where I grew up, they have a 3,500 foot runway at the local airport. The population of the nearest town: about 5,000.

Even many podunk towns in the US have airports that would seem to suffice, without modification.

[snoopy369]

Sure. But, why would those podunk towns want a 6 passenger plane? Perhaps those would be mildly helpful, but I know that my girlfriend's hometown, a podunk town in Missouri, consists largely of people who never leave their town except to shop in neighboring towns, and they just drive there.

I imagine the market for this is if you could put it in major cities and use it as a faster (both in the air and pre-takeoff) option for business types, avoiding traffic in NYC/DC type situations.

[DanS]

Originally posted by snoopy369
So basically it needs a half mile or more stil for takeoff, call it .5 mi² when you consider extra space and hangars and such. Hrm. That's a bit too far to build that many more airports in an urban setting ... clearing that much space would cost a fortune.

Now, the interesting part starts when you consider that presumably the FAA won't require the same passenger screening that you need for a 727. If you can imagine an air taxi that takes off every ten minutes from newark to NYC, say, and you just have to show up ten minutes early to board the plane? Or from BWI to Dulles [or whatever the near-downtown-DC airport is]?

DC is a little atypical, since it has flight restrictions. National Airport is right across the Potomac from DC.

You would have to think a little differently. Little airports like College Park, Maryland airport. This is all about more fully utilizing the vast capacity of small airports.

[DanS]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Sure. But, why would those podunk towns want a 6 passenger plane?

The airport only has to be accessible. It need not have sufficient demand in itself.

E.g., you call a plane from a larger regional airport, it arrives at your local airport and takes you where you need to go.

[Thorgal]

In fact delays are normal when designing huge planes. 747-100 was delayed more than a year due to engine problems leaving Boeing on the edge of bankruptcy. I can say from first hand that Airbus is faaaar away of bankruptcy. I am so sorry for some pople here...

[snoopy369]

Sure, but I don't think that would ever be profitable unless enough urban centers had accessible airports in enough quantity to support the number of planes this would have to run to be profitable (say, a few hundred). I don't think there's enough demand for people going to small towns *anywhere* to justify a service like this.

Now, towns like College Park or such might be better, as you could live there and work in DC. Still though, you'd need a few hundred of these planes just to make any impact at all - even if they each flew 30 people a day [unlikely], 200 planes would fly a whopping 6000 people/day, which is a small, small fraction of air traffic at the moment.

I think if/when an airplane is built which has a <1000 foot takeoff distance, and/or a useful/cheap VTOL plane is built, you might start seeing air taxis be much more successful. Realistically, VTOL is probably much more likely than the <1000 foot non-VTOL plane (as it has fewer obstacles, anyhow). Then you could take abandoned lots and make them into a mini-airport.

[DanS]

Originally posted by Thorgal
In fact delays are normal when designing huge planes. 747-100 was delayed more than a year due to engine problems leaving Boeing on the edge of bankruptcy. I can say from first hand that Airbus is faaaar away of bankruptcy. I am so sorry for some pople here...

Yes, that's exactly what I had in the back of my mind when I posted this thread. Boeing nearly went belly up on lesser problems.

[Thorgal]

Well, good for Airbus then. BTW i wouldn´t call not having engines lesser problems.

[DanS]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Now, towns like College Park or such might be better, as you could live there and work in DC. Still though, you'd need a few hundred of these planes just to make any impact at all - even if they each flew 30 people a day [unlikely], 200 planes would fly a whopping 6000 people/day, which is a small, small fraction of air traffic at the moment.

I think the population of the US is diffuse enough (think suburbs) to make it a going concern. The Washington area is 90% suburbs, f.e.

[DanS]

Originally posted by Thorgal
Well, good for Airbus then. BTW i wouldn´t call not having engines lesser problems.

I was referring to the length of the delay, which is what impacts solvency. In any event, we don't know whether there will be additional delays on the A380.