Has The Jumbo Jet Had Its Day?
HenryGarten
Posts: 24,800 Forum Member
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The Jumbo introduced in 1970 has been the workhorse of world travel for 45 years.
However last year not a single airline placed an order for the world's two biggest commercial jets, the Boeing 747-8 and the double-decker Airbus A380.
What do you think? Would you miss them?
See The end of The Jumbo Jet?
However last year not a single airline placed an order for the world's two biggest commercial jets, the Boeing 747-8 and the double-decker Airbus A380.
What do you think? Would you miss them?
See The end of The Jumbo Jet?
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Comments
The 747 is an old airframe design compared to the modern ones (although it's had a lot of upgrades to various subsystems).
I won't miss them, but some might.
*I would not be at all surprised if there are some 35+ year old ones still in service.
I think as more people tend to have their holidays in the UK, then yes air travel and Jumbo jets are less popular.
A lot of blame is down to people just wanting to avoid the stress of air travel, having to check in 2 hrs before flight, then having to almost get undressed and empty your hand luggage when going through security, not being allowed to carry liquids then getting fined by your airline, because your hand luggage was 1mm too big!
No wonder people are avoiding the plane.
The latest Boeing 747 - 81 is supposed to use 8% less fuel per passenger than the A380.
The fuel cost per passenger is less for the twin engined jets such as the Boeing 777 and the A330 so they'll still be more popular but the larger range planes with four engines were purchased by Quantas and Emirates, once you have a large fleet you stop buying them.
If the 747's flying across the Atlantic don't cost you too much in terms of maintenance they'll keep on flying, no point in replacing them.
Where aeroplanes go to die.
:kitty:
That doesn't mean that it's the end of all large plane flying. Why should it?
The cheapest way of running airlines is to transport as many people as possible in one go and so they will continue to do that even if they cut back on amounts of times they do a route. That way when they do put a plane on that route their will be enough people to fill it and so they will always need big planes. Just not so many of them.
I will be sad to see the gradual decline of the 747-400, beautiful aircraft.
The smaller planes cost less to run in terms of fuel but the larger planes have a greater range.
So who want to do a long journey on a plane that has to stop many times alone the way?
Economy of scale.
Pretty much.
It's something I had a disagreement with some Americans about a while back, they couldn't understand why the A380 could potentially be a success at the same point time as the Boeing Dreamliner, they couldn't understand that in some parts of the world slots of aircraft are very high in demand, and there aren't loads of "regional hubs" with short distance flights.
From memory Heathrow (and much of southern/central UK airspace on the whole) is running at something like 90% of theoretical safe capacity for individual flights at the moment with a lot of the EU big airports in a similar way, so anything that potentially lets an airline move an extra 200+ people per flight is important to the ability to expand the business and is far easier/cheaper/faster to put into use than a new runway or new airport..
They can then land at other major, but less busy hubs and if need be passengers transfer once to another flight to reach their regional airport.
It's like having double deckers and minibuses for much the same reason, the high capacity transport goes on major routes that require the seats, then the lower capacity transport goes on the less busy routes (or to collect/drop off passengers at the major points).
Andrew-W, isn't that very much dependent on the route and if you just take into account the fuel?
I was under the impression that take off/landing slots cost, and an aircraft doing a lot of take off and landings requires the more rigorous safety checks and parts replacements more frequently due to things like the increase in pressurisation cycles, and number of times the airframe is exposed to the stresses of landing.
So whilst they may be cheaper in terms of fuel economy, that may be at least partly offset by an increase in the maintenance and other running costs.
Since in fact more people are going abroad for their holidays, your post couldn't be any more wrong.
The reason for the no orders is because of the recession. Nothing else.
I like the classic -100 and -200 models myself, don't like the stretched upper deck.
The 747SP was great as well
http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/1/7/0/1132071.jpg
The engines are more efficient now so the twin engined planes can fly further making the larger planes of this type more popular.
See, I like the extended upper deck of the -400, it looks more balanced to me.
It's the aircraft that first got me into aviation.
PAN AM (picture in link)
That is a blast from the past. A once mighty airline that now just a memory.
Flying is far safer than travelling by car or train, it catches everyone's attention with a lot of people dieing together if a plane crashes.
You're more likely to win the lottery, that's if you do it.