Passengers love the Airbus A380, but buyers have never benefited | Business

TheLooking at such a huge plane, he felt a miracle he could fly. And not only fly but soar so gently, especially compared to the Boeing 747, it was designed to replace and outclbad. Pbadengers love it, but the A380 has never completely taken off among airline buyers.

Airbus' announcement of the final curtain of the pan-European A380 production chain comes after years of speculation over the condemnation of the superjumbo. Orders were stalled in a risk-averse airline industry whose economy and road networks were altered at the wrong time for the A380.

Airbus had taken the lead in producing a plane built with lighter materials, much more fuel efficient and potentially offering significant savings and benefits on routes where airlines could guarantee the loading of hundreds of pbadengers on each flight. This seemed an ideal solution for crowded transatlantic corridors, where airlines would compete for scarce and expensive niches in intercontinental hubs such as Heathrow.

However, even when the first A380 entered service in 2007, orders for a different aircraft still being purchased compared to rival Boeing. The 787 Dreamliner could fly a similar range with only two engines. This new start has advanced the use of lightweight composite materials and would require about half the number of pbadengers, 250 to 300 instead of the usual 550 of an A380, to make long-haul flights economically viable.

The star-shaped aeronautical model, in which airlines fed the pbadengers of the connecting flights, and the longer the long-haul plane was, the better it was, to be challenged. Low cost aviation has revived secondary airports and pbadengers are becoming more and more used to point-to-point direct flights. The need for expensive Airbus double-deck aircraft, whose wings were so wide that the parking bays and equipment had to be rearranged to fit in, was fading away.

Doubts increased when many customers were reluctant to accept a degenerate flight on an aircraft whose future was compromised. Only one airline, Emirates, appeared totally in love, placing huge orders that kept the A380 manufacturing program going. Few others had the deep pockets of the booming Gulf carrier, or customers rich enough to deserve to turn some of the aircraft's spacious interior into a spa suite with a shower.

British Airways spoke about the qualities of the plane, but the price. The Australian carrier, Qantas, was stung by youth problems as an early adopter, stuck on an order placed in 2006 and finally canceled it last week. Even Air France has reduced the plane badembled by its compatriots in Toulouse.

The most disturbing sign was the news that two of the first A380s, still in their infancy, were parked in the Pyrenees and undressed for their parts. The plane had gone from big birds of the sky to mere organ donors in a decade. It was a more economical solution for their owner, the German leasing company Dr Peters, than to try to rent them to reluctant airlines.

When Emirates finally decided it was enough, trying to convert their order into newer and smaller models, the game was over. Few people can blame Airbus for wanting to hang on and push this incredible airplane to unquestionable virtues. But the world for which it was built did not materialize as Airbus had hoped.