Tim Clark is a reasonable guy in the airline industry. It's worth listening to him talk. He commented on the future of jumbo air travel.
Why the Airbus A380 was such a failure
The future of air travel was thought to be represented by the A380. Higher capacity jets are needed as the demand for air travel continues to increase. That was not the case.
The production of the A380 has ended because of lack of demand. The A380 is a great plane, but most other A380 customers would rather have had a different plane.
The challenge for the A380 has been that other companies have introduced smaller, long range and fuel efficient jets. The airplanes allow airlines to efficiently operate point-to-point long haul routes that may not have been economical in the past.
Most other airlines haven't had the same success with the A380.
Economies of scale are required to make the A380 work; you need a massive hub & spoke network to fill A380s, and having just a dozen A380s doesn’t really accomplish that
You need access to a lot of capital, and being owned by an oil rich country certainly helps with that
CEOs of publicly traded airlines are just conservative by nature; they generally won’t get blamed for things they don’t spend money on, while they will get blamed for things that they do spend money on
All too many A380s have already been scrapped
Tim Clark’s argument for a new A380 variant
The last of the A380s was delivered in September 2021. Tim Clark was vocal about asking for help keeping the A380 going. He hasn't talked much about the jet since then.
Clark talks about the need for an A380 equivalent in an interview with CNN Travel. According to his argument, the demand for global air travel grew by 4.5% per year pre-pandemic, and we will probably continue to see that growth in the future.
Clark thinks that there isn't any superjumbo planes in the future.
“The notion that the A380 was a spent force was always a little bit of a difficult one for us to swallow.”
“I was chuckling to myself, thinking ‘wait and see.’ We started flying the A380 into Heathrow six times a day in October of last year, and we haven’t had a [free] seat on any of them since.”
“The math tells you that you need a big unit, much bigger than we’re getting at the moment. The biggest one will be the 777-9, whenever that comes to market, which in our configuration [will seat] 364 people against 484 on the A380s with our new premium economy. And it was 519 before, so you get where I’m coming from.”
“Even with multiple 787s and A350s all busy flying around the world, I still don’t get how you will pick up that growth curve. Supply will be suppressed, demand will continue to grow, and when that happens prices rise, it’s inevitable.
“If you take the A380s out of the frame by the mid-2030s, how are you going to make it work? Do we see massive upgrades of airfields or new airfields? At Heathrow, they can’t even agree on the third runway. Schiphol has just reduced the number of landings and takeoffs that they will allow. So, one wonders, how would this demand be accommodated?”
Clark asked what the solution would be.
“Is it possible to redesign a new A380? Yes. Is it possible to lighten the aircraft? Yes. When they brought this aircraft to market, composites weren’t really [widespread]. Imagine a composite wing and a predominantly composite fuselage. Imagine engines that are giving you a 20 to 25% improvement compared to what you get today.”
“We’re trying to get everybody working on the big fans for the bigger aircraft as well. If you can get them to do what I think they could do in terms of fuel efficiency and power, then you have the makings of an airplane that would match or beat the economics of the [twin-engine aircraft] that we see today, by quite a long way.”
Clark acknowledges that this probably won't be happening soon.
“Do I think that airlines will step up and sign up to this project? Doubtful at this stage.”
“On the one hand I’m very keen to take a good hard look at this, on the other I’m not optimistic that the stakeholders in the ecosystem are up for it.”
“The airline industry is, rightly so, populated with people who are conservative in nature, because they’ve lost their shirts — this has been a seriously bad time for air travel. But now, things are starting to look a lot better, demand is back. So they have the ability to think hard about the future. Whether they’ve got the appetite for it, I don’t know. I know we have it.”
What does the future of flying shower suites look like?!
Bottom line
Tim Clark is once again campaigning for the A380 in order to get a more efficient version of the jet. There has been a lot of advancement with technology on other planes. With demand for air travel continuing to grow, it would make sense for a superjumbo to invest in technology the same way.
New aircraft technology is a race against the clock with many airlines promising to have no net emissions within a few decades. New technology for smaller jets has not been applied to the A380.
I am definitely on Team Clark, but I don't think this will gain much traction.
Clark commented on the need for the A380 in the future.
