[SergeantMajor]

Panda, not everywhere is well suited to the A380, least of all the Kangaroo route, as Qantas has found to its cost.

BA has twelve A380s ordered, I believe around four have been delivered to date (?) and all should be in service by 2016.

You can take a tour of BA’s A380 here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA8BdSlw6vU

[KarlMarx]

Sergeant Major, your comment about Qantas’s problems is way off mark. The problem is not the aircraft type, but the commercial agreement on that routing.

[Chiantikid]

rferguson – I agree with GRU and MIA. also SFO in the summer. All have plenty of front end customers as well as being able to fill the 300+ WT seats

[BigDog.]

KarlMarx – 13/04/2014 13:17 GMT

+1

Yes Emirates, who have ordered around 140 with 50 delivered, manage the A380 on the Kangaroo route (Sydney, Brisbane & Melbourne) and onto Auckland very well. Similarly Singapore Airlines, some can manage the A380, BA with only 5 (from 12 ordered) A380s and a hub at the end, cannot.

http://www.emirates.com/uk/english/flying/our_fleet/emirates_a380/emirates_schedule/emirates_flight_schedule.aspx

[pheighdough]

Would BA consider PHX for the A380? It always surprises me that they fly a B747-400 on the daily route, and whenever I have flown on it, it has always been full.
I’m prepared to be shot-down, but I thought I’d ask…

[TominScotland]

Big Dog – “Yes Emirates, who have ordered around 140 with 50 delivered, manage the A380 on the Kangaroo route (Sydney, Brisbane & Melbourne) and onto Auckland very well. Similarly Singapore Airlines, some can manage the A380, BA with only 5 (from 12 ordered) A380s and a hub at the end, cannot.”

Surely that is exactly the point – neither EK or SQ have a “hub at the end” and that makes using A380s on the Kangeroo much more practical for them. Both BA and QF do, hence the problems both have had/ have with the route. BA’s 777 is currently parked at Sydney for over 10 hours on a daily basis – without a major schedule change, doing the same with an A380 would be even more wasteful. Given that BA015 arrives in Sydney shortly after the airport opens after curfew and BA016 gets back to LHR at a similar time, it is not easy to see where the flexibilty for a schedule change lies.

[Westlake501]

Maybe I should have phrased the original post differently to where would you like to see the BA A380 going next (regardless of economics, airport facilities, etc.) and what are the most likely next destinations for a BA A380.

Either way maybe BA should buy some more A380s are there appears to be enough destinations with enough demand. This would also help with increasing Heathrow capacity as a third runway and/or mixed mode seems a long way off (if at all).

[SergeantMajor]

TominScotland wrote:

—
Big Dog – “Yes Emirates, who have ordered around 140 with 50 delivered, manage the A380 on the Kangaroo route (Sydney, Brisbane & Melbourne) and onto Auckland very well. Similarly Singapore Airlines, some can manage the A380, BA with only 5 (from 12 ordered) A380s and a hub at the end, cannot.”

“Surely that is exactly the point – neither EK or SQ have a “hub at the end” and that makes using A380s on the Kangaroo much more practical for them.

Both BA and QF do, hence the problems both have had/ have with the route. BA’s 777 is currently parked at Sydney for over 10 hours on a daily basis – without a major schedule change, doing the same with an A380 would be even more wasteful.

Given that BA015 arrives in Sydney shortly after the airport opens after curfew and BA016 gets back to LHR at a similar time, it is not easy to see where the flexibility for a schedule change lies.”

—

Exactly right, Tom.

Buying A380s is not just about whether you can fill the beasts, but whether you can fill them *profitably*.

Without new terminal (and runway) capacity, BA will struggle to operate a significantly larger fleet of A380s. And the excellent economics of BA’s 777-300ER subfleet seems to be driving BA in that direction, though I believe they do have more A380 options should they choose to exercise them.

[canucklad]

I agree with the analysis that BA has to control its costs at the expense of future growth.

BA has cornered itself into its current plight and needs to manage with the tools at hand. I’m sure most of us know the phrase that uses having a pee as a metaphor.

Sadly BA has accepted its position in the global market place and this is reflected by its recent bland /safe decision making.

I’m predicting that the biggest challenge a successful BA will have in the future is when their growth ironically stagnates due to successfully reaching full capacity. When this happens I wonder how badly the city will react to non-growth. Even though the LHR issue isn’t something BA can do anything about.

The only way for passenger expansion in the medium to long term is the 380, but I’m not sure that BA’s management have enough innovate thinking to convince people to change from their competitors !

If they did I see no reason why they shouldn’t be able to use a 380 down to Sydney. I’m afraid the middle hub argument just doesn’t cut it with me. SQ / EK use the 380 to their advantage , CX use superior customer service , so its time BA aggressively took their future back into their own hands rather than reacting to market forces !

Get MOL into waterside : )

[KarlMarx]

SergeantMajor – 14/04/2014 11:06 GMT

You need to accept that British Airways (IAG, in fact) is not a major player, anymore, rather than pretend that building a new terminal/runway at London will make a difference, it will not.

The balance has changed and growth is being driven from the Middle East, which is why Emirates, Qatar and Etihad will be the players to really succeed with the A380 and Dubai has just eclipsed London for the number of international pax recently, although we will see if they can retain that title during the summer season, which I doubt.

The future for IAG lies in intelligent business planning, based on a recognition that it is a rather small/medium player in the bigger scheme of things and that North America and niche markets are the profitable future.

The A380s BA has bought will do a good job, intelligently targeted (which they are being) and the 787/A350 will become important instruments of profitability in the future, as will BA’s withdrawal from the short haul market, with realignment to Vueling in the next 5-7 years.

IAG will become a 55-60 million passenger player and will be a decent margin generator.

[Panda01]

“SergeantMajor- I have been on the a380 and its nice. But the only thing that I don’t like is that the outside window is small but the inside one is massive and also, there is a big gap between both windows, so you can’t see much.(the a320 family is the best-or seeing out of the window)

Also, your comment about the Kangaroo route is not true. The problem is that Qantas has teamed up with Emirates and so people been going from Qantas to Emirates, but not many are travelling on Qantas. But if Qantas had stayed with BA, then they could have got the benefits of BA a380 to Hong Kong and Singapore.

[JohnHarper]

Of the routes I fly regularly I can’t imagine choosing BA to either HKG where Cathay operate the best services or to SIN when SIA are simply the best there is and you can fly the A380 with them too if you want to.

On other routes there is a choice too which always tends to have a better on board offering than BA’s old products.

[CXDiamond]

While I very much like the A380 and would generally choose to fly it I have stuck to CX and the 773 between HKG and LHR simply because the onboard products are in a different league. CX C beats BA F every time and CX F is in a totally different league.

Now that I’m based more in Singapore however I’m lucky enough to be able to enjoy the A380 with excellent onboard products from SQ.

[TominScotland]

Not a BA A380 point so apologies for drifting off-topic slightly but I am intrigued by the latest Emirates A380 announcement
(http://www.businesstraveller.com/news/100458/emirates-to-fly-a380-to-kuwait)
of flights to Kuwait from Dubai.

Maybe someone who understands aircraft economics can comment but I would have thought that this was a somewhat odd choice of destination and not one which optimises the efficiencies which the A380 can give to airlines. Unless, of course, it is all about status and marketing rather than direct bottom line or, indeed, environmental considerations.

[mkcol74]

Or maybe it’s just that they have a large gap in their schedules TominScotland where this rotation will fit in nicely.
There’s many a time I’ve flown on an A340-600 DOH-BAH-DOH for example.

[Author]

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