Thread by @hatlad43

What is the connection between the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 787?

One is killing the other.

By the late 90s Airbus has established themselves as the second largest airliner manufacturer in the world and proven to be competitive with #1 airliner manufacturer at the time at some market points, Boeing.

Airbus had studied that the high demand long haul market is increasing and felt that they needed to take action to break Boeing's monopoly on that market.

Airbus believed that the spoke and hub flight is and still will be dominating for a few decades ahead. But what is spoke and hub flight?

It works as follows.

H from a small city B in country A wants to go to another small city Y in country Z. What he has to do is fly from city B to a large city in his country that act as a hub using a small "feeder" 'liner. Let's say it's city C.

In city C, he and other people from other small cities in country A hitch the same flight that goes to a hub city in country Z, let's say it's city X. They'll board a large, long-haul 'liner. In this case might be a B747.

Then when they arrive in X, they'll split up to board their final flights. In case of H, is his flight to city Y using yet another small feeder 'liner.

At the time, Airbus actually had large long haulers, A330 and A340. But the capacity is far less than Boeing's offering with 747 (even 777). Also they predicted that hub and spoke will increase in demand.

Before I go any further, I want to explain why this flight model was used widely. Firstly, back in the day airplanes weren't efficient enough to be small while carrying sufficient amount of fuel. So they need to be large.

As any airliner types, it'll be profitable for airlines to have the plane fly fully loaded by passengers. By gathering many people from many places to go to the same destination (country), it won't be hard to make the large aircraft full and ultimately, profitable.

Of course for passengers it'd be a long journey from point A to point B, but that is the most economical method. At least at the time.

Back to Airbus. With that in mind, their mission was to create a large airliner that has more capacity than Boeing 747-400 while being 15%-20% more efficient.

There were some proposals, the most unique one I think is to merge two A340 fuselages _side by side_

As much as I want to see it, what we have is the more "conventional" full double decker.

And if you think the fuselage looks large and rather uhh bantet, it is. It has the length-to-width ratio of 10.18:1 (72.7 m long, 7.14 m wide). Compared to my favourite l o n g b o i A340-600 that has 12.9:1 ratio (74.8 m long, 5.8 m wide).

Sidenote-- there's no such thing as fuselage length-to-width ratio on any official specs, it's just how I try to compare why one is bantet and the other is a l o n g b o i unit.

Discussing the fuselage width, idk what is Airbus talking about by naming the not-so-wide A350 "eXtra Wide Body". The XWB barely reach the 6 meter mark on fuselage width.

That 7 metres wide body (6.5 m inside) has the densest configuration at 10-abreast. The proposed A380plus with slightly thinner walls would have 11-abreast, had the market still holding up.

Although the market isn't collapsing whatsoever, it's not as good as they predicted; increase in demand. That's because of Boeing decision to replace the aging 767 with the 7E7. Later known as 787 Dreamliner.

*cue dramatic music

Before I go any further I want to share this unrelated and cursed image I just saved a few hours ago.

Hmmmm 13 days has passed and I finally have a will to continue this thread. So how could a smaller airliner in a different sort of market kill a behemoth of an aircraft that is A380?

So back in mid 1990s, Boeing saw their sales for the 747 is dropping. That's partly because of their decision to sell the smaller, cheaper, and more efficient 777 that serves mainly for the same purpose to the 747, the hub and spoke model.

At the same time their aging and not so popular 767 desperately needed to be updated. By the late 90s and early 00s the manufacturing process of composite materials such as carbon fibre increased rapidly and Boeing thought

yes please.

CF as widely known is lighter while being stronger (as stiffness goes) than aluminium with the same size. Meaning that it's the perfect material to be used as the main material for a next gen airliner.

The A380 fuselage is also made from composite materials, but different than the 787. The A380 has a thin aluminium sheet sandwiched between two fiberglass reinforced resin. It's cheaper than all carbon fibre skin as the 787, but also.. less good.

787 also use CF as the main materials on the wings and stabilizers. It's widely used, in fact 50% of the thing is carbon fibre. It's also the reason why GA doesn't actually order one, it's vastly expensive for an aircraft that size.

But with the aircraft so light, and the next gen, high bypass ratio, super efficient jet engine, it has become the most efficient airliner ever made.

In fact it's so efficient, even though the fuel tank is less than a third of the one in the Behemoth, it'll cover just as far as the Behemoth. So be it, with half as many passengers. But that is exactly the point.

It opens up what it's called point to point model. It's essentially just fly from one place to another. What makes it so revolutionary is that this flight model now can be served as long-haul flights.

Now let's take example from the previous case. H from a small city C wants to go to another small city Y in country Z. But instead of going to a larger city served as hub etc, he could just hitch a ride on a 787 directly from C to Y.

I forgot to mention why I called the C and Y is small. In here, the small city means that not a lot of people from that city/area have the same demand for a flight.

In previous case it's more difficult to fill up an existing large long-hauler, while now it's easy to fill up a small long-hauler, with the same amount of demands.

For passengers, it's a great deal not to spend too much time on one journey. For airlines, they can serve up many low demand flights with no loss.

These low demand flights are increasing in number. While the high demand flights can be easily and efficiently served with smaller Boeing 777 and currently, the A350.

((the A350 itself has a rather interesting back story connected to this one, but that's for another time)))

I forgot to mention that the prospects of the 787 also create a new type of flights. Budget long haul flights.

Most budget flights around the world previously only served regional flights with small and medium airliners. But with the 787, these airlines can serve long haul international flights with cheap price. Most notably, the Norway based red nosed Norwegian Air Shuttle.

That's it. That's how a small long-hauler beats a behemoth long-hauler, despite being introduced in roughly the same period. By greatly predict the future market and done everything necessary in the development process.

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