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.