
Airbus A380 – $6.1B in additional costs due to project delays - jakub_g
http://calleam.com/WTPF/?p=4700
======
InTheArena
There is a bigger problem. The growth of ETOPS planes (planes with two engines
that can fly over the Atlantic or Pacific) with fewer seats that need to be
filled for a route to be profitable have basically made this plane irrelevant.
This includes the 787, the 777, and Airbus's own A350. Airbus greenlit the
project based on original sales projections of 1,200 A380s being sold. So far
around three hundred have been sold. In addition Airbus projected a brand new
market called "VLA" (very large aircraft >500 seats) would come into existence
and demand sixty to seventy airframes a year. They therefore compromised the
original design of the A380 to target a re-winged and re-engined stretch
version down the line. So far most carriers run under 500 seats, with no-one
even coming close the theoretical 850 seats that the current Airbus could do,
to say nothing about a next generation A380.

Airbus explicitly bet that point to point routes would go away in favor of
fortress hubs and hub to hub traffic. The reverse has instead happened. United
is making a small fortune now with hub to previously unserved cities in Asia.
Norwegian is disrupting the entire Atlantic market by flying 787s into other
carriers hubs, destroying any economic advantage that the hubs have.

Airbus wanted plane that was "the biggest and the best" for prestige purposes.
That led them to green-light the A380. The A308s engineering problems are
problems, but what ultimately dooms it is a basic conceptual problem with the
plane itself. It's basically a prestige project, and is going to leave Airbus
and European tax-payers on the hook.

All that said, the A380 is a great plane to fly on. I fly it regularly to
Bangkok via Seoul. More often then not, the entire upper deck (which is
business only on Korean) is 75% empty.

~~~
rpmcmurphy
I call the A380 the Flytanic. It's not even a very atrractive plane. The 747
is retro now, but it is a beautiful plane. Whenever I can, I fly the 787 on
long haul flights. Super comfortable, love it.

~~~
Joeri
I recently flew economy in a 787 for the first time and it was the most
uncomfortable flight I've ever had. Incredibly narrow seats, and way too much
cabin noise. I have heard the same thing from other people.

I wish airlines would charge a bit more per seat instead of trying to keep
shrinking the seats. As it stands you have to pay a lot extra in many cases to
get a comfortable seat.

~~~
dakial1
You must have been on JAL 787. The economy seats there are incredibly tiny. I
assume this is because Japanese people are not big.

------
bsdpython
"Internal reviews identified that the heart of the problem was the fact that
the different design groups working on the project had used different Computer
Aided Design (CAD) software to create the engineering drawings. The
development of the aircraft was a collaboration between 16 sites spread across
4 different countries. German and Spanish designers had used one version of
the software (CATIA version 4), while British and French teams had upgraded to
version 5."

Really interesting! While I've hardly worked on anything as complex as an
A380, I take it as a high priority for all software packages, from dev to test
to prod, all be on the exact same version. Python 3.4 on one box and 3.6 on
another? Let's not.

~~~
mattmanser
Several years ago I worked with a large multinational company where every site
had their own IT teams. A lot of mergers, etc. Probably much like BAE. A firm
who's major product is info.

Some of those teams were extremely incompetent.

My client had made a video of the CEO speaking to the whole company which
turned out wouldn't fit on their internal sharepoint site because there was a
50 meg limit for videos. The CEO was not at all impressed with the quality of
a 20 min video at 50 meg so in desperation, they ended up asking us to host it
for them.

But then vimeo didn't work for some sites, then wistia for others, in the end
we ended up having to set it up on Amazon's cloudfront. So each site had their
own firewall rules, own white-lists, bad IT connections, etc.

Throughout this debacle, we got claims of _our_ incompetence by IT personnel
at their various sites. Really opened my eyes at how disorganised a large
organisation can become, as well as how people can hold positions in large
orgs that they have no ability to perform by politicking.

And that's how you end up with loads of different versions of software at
different sites in the same company.

EDIT: Actually, I recall incorrectly, we originally used cloudfront, which
didn't work, then vimeo was blocked on some sites, but no-one had blocked
wistia yet as they were still a fairly new entrant.

Random endorsement: Wistia are great, love their API, love their support,
great video hosting company.

~~~
maxxxxx
I see the same at my company. I think the reason is that the top guys in non-
IT industries don't see IT as core competence but as a cost center that
ideally gets outsourced to the lowest bidder. Unless there is a very strong
CIO different divisions won't talk to each other and no standardization
happens. Even if one division does a good job they usually can't sustain that
for long because their budgets will get cut. It's a very unhappy situation for
everybody and the best people leave after a while.

------
danjc
The article states that calculation of bend radii (of wiring/cabling) was the
problem. If that was the case, surely one of the two versions of their design
software was calculating incorrectly? If so, one would think that the whole
team being on the same version wouldn't have helped (if they were on a version
that calculated lengths incorrectly).

But perhaps there's more subtlety to the calculation discrepancy than is
evident in the article.

------
everybodyknows
> ... when the A380 Program Manager attempted to move the German designers
> onto the same CAD system as the French, he met a wall of resistance.
> Personal rivalries and national pride are reported to have been issues ...

And yet there are other, more objective motives for resistance. As all big-org
managers know:

1\. Reputational: Belatedly switching to your peer organization's tools
suggests you made a poor planning decision earlier.

2\. Work shifting: The switch itself will inevitably consume many weeks of
calender time, though non-technical upper management will insist on pretending
otherwise. While you're struggling to switch, the rival peer org will press
its advantage, collecting milestone checkoffs and praise from higher-ups.
Alternative is to block the change, so as to bury some considerable share of
the tool mismatch pain and delay in the rival org.

------
gumby
Talk about burying the lede:

> In today’s complex integrated supply chains, stories of failed configuration
> management during the design process are a sadly all too common.

This is a good way to kill a lean and virtual startup, and surely has.

Also fascinating: the manager who raised the problem in the first place was
blocked by upper management and then fired because the problem occurred.

------
mkh
I admit I know virtually nothing about the aircraft industry, but I always
wonder why Airbus doesn't do the initially planned cargo version of the A380.
The only reason I can imagine is that there aren't enough customers for the
cargo version, but why is this so? Isn't air cargo growing? Would an cargo
A380 be too expensive? Some comments suggest the A380 has bad fuel efficiency
per passenger mile, but some others suggest this is because airlines put less
passenger seats in the plane than possible. Surely this can't be a problem for
freight planes? What is it?

~~~
jakub_g
Apparently it's about the weight/space ratio which makes is not economical to
fly cargo with A380:

"An A380-F would be too fat to fly at a profit: The plane would hit the
maximum payload (a constraint of weight) before its maximum cubic space (a
constraint of volume). Its design can’t support the maximum payload required
to generate a profit.

(...)

The A380-F would be able to carry 60% more volume than the 747, but only 28%
more weight. It wouldn’t be fully loaded at typical levels of air cargo
density, or at least nothing close to what can be supported by the thrust
capacity of the 747."

[https://www.flexport.com/blog/airbus-a380-no-cargo-
equivalen...](https://www.flexport.com/blog/airbus-a380-no-cargo-equivalent/)

------
stoolpigeon
Most comfortable passenger aircraft I've ever flown on. I've only flown them
with Emirates - and it may be a combination of their choices for how it is
equipped inside along with their service, but either way if I ever have a
chance to be on an A-380 I jump at it.

~~~
caminante
How does it compare to the Dreamliner/Boeing 787?

I like the Dreamliner. The ride is noticeably smoother and the improvements to
cabin air filtration, humidity management, cabin pressurization at lower
altitudes, larger windows, and "mood lighting" make for a more enjoyable ride
[0].

[0][https://backpackerlee.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/the-
airbus-a3...](https://backpackerlee.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/the-
airbus-a380-vs-the-boeing-787-dreamliner/)

~~~
sitepodmatt
All nice bonuses when you've got your knees in your nostrils and elbow locked
with the person next to you. Almost all 787s joining fleets have smaller width
or legroom than their replacements (whatever they are a380, 777, a330 etc..).
There are exceptions Air India is one and I forget the other..

~~~
sitepodmatt
A little late addition, also consider watching the documentary Broken Dreams
787 by Al Jazeera, it is available on YouTube, some very concerning
allegations that go far beyond limited space.

------
tiatia
Don't write it off.

1\. They say the plane may have been "10 years too early"

2\. It will get more fuel efficient engines.

[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=it&tl=en&js=y&prev...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=it&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.welt.de%2Fwirtschaft%2Farticle140020669%2FDer-A380-wurde-
wohl-zehn-Jahre-zu-frueh-eingefuehrt.html&edit-text=)

~~~
valuearb
All planes will get more fuel efficient engines. Direct routes are likely to
remain dominant.

~~~
tiatia
Where? In the US?

I am not sure this is the case in markets with hight growth rates.

------
secfirstmd
It also important to point out that a lot of airports (for example, Dublin)
are not equipped to actually be able to manage the A380. Where as a lot are
capable of the 747.

~~~
Tsiklon
An addendum to your point: Aer Lingus (the Irish Flag Carrier) used to fly the
747 out of Dublin.

