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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> I hope Airbus can continue making this model

The A380 was doomed from the start. It was built to compete with the 747, a jet which first flew in 1969 [1] and designed for hub-and-spoke "trunk" routes. In that narrow aim, the A380 succeeded. The problem is the entire A380/747 category peaked before the A380's first flight. High-efficiency engines mean long-and-skinny routes are now profitable. Instead of packing Chicago to London and D.C. to London passengers into a JFK-Heathrow megaflight, one runs Chicago-Heathrow and D.C.-Heathrow with medium jets.

At the end of the day, the A380 was designed to be impressive to European politicians more than to airline executives.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747

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I mean, British Airways flies a 747-400 and an A380 daily to Chicago. It's cities like Austin, TX, San Jose, CA and Portland, OR that are getting huge boosts of non-stop service to western europe.

While Heathrow to Austin did start on a 787, as seemed appropriate, it has become so successful that it upgraded to 777 and now actually a 747, amazing as that is.

http://www.austintexas.gov/news/british-airways’-747-begins-...

That's remarkable, though a huge downgrade for passenger experience. Those 787s are really magnificent.

The bigger question which is still unaddressed is: with the growth in passenger traffic, will there be a return to hub and spoke, or can long and skinny win?

Even if the a380 is dead, food for thought: In 5-10 years we may have a 300 person 1 hr transport from sydney to New York by way of the BFR. That is hub and spoke

> with the growth in passenger traffic, will there be a return to hub and spoke, or can long and skinny win?

Long-and-skinny scales better than hub-and-spoke. Comparing the systems, you have identical origin and destination airport traffic. With long-and-skinny, however, traffic at congested hubs is avoided and reduced.

Long-and-skinny is purely a reality because of improved jet technology, in reliability and efficiency. What four engines could barely do in 1969 two engines comfortably manage today.

> In 5-10 years we may have a 300 person 1 hr transport from sydney to New York by way of the BFR.

Is your average human's health and safety really compatible with the acceleration required for ballistic travel?

At one time people thought that any transport faster than a horse would cause the human body to fly apart.

Engineering finds a way.

We're in the opposite position from people that doubted whether the human body could cope with transport faster than a horse.

We have pretty good data for what very high G-forces do to the human body and what the failure rates of rocket launches are, and neither are compatible with routine commercial flight.

If you consider that the early jets (ie comet) had a tendency to disintegrate, and take a speculative view that rockets have largely been in the comet era for perhaps a prolonged period (40-50 years!) and take another speculative leap that current technology/space companies are going to improve this by orders of magnitude (lots of ifs) then it isn’t too far removed.

And the cost of a flight would be 300-400k in fuel, which means that tickets would be roughly premium economy cost or business cost. Business would eat up day trip returns from ny to shanghai in a heartbeat. Maybe people would have to wear a g force suit like pilots?

For very long distance maybe. It isn't clear how many people BFR can actually carry, which is a big factor (you quote 300, but I don't see any source backing that up). 10 people for the amount of fuel implies that the trip is only for the insanely rich - CEOs will take it but the rest of us will stick to the current technology (24 hour flight). If they can get 1000 people, the costs are probably cheaper than a jet, but they need the hub/spoke model to fill it up.

However that is only good for very long routes. Chicago to London is faster with current jets after you consider all the time wasted transferring to the BFR. Chicago to London can scale down to a direct Milwaukee (Wisconsin) to Stockholm (Sweden), if there is just a small amount of demand.

Hub and spoke scales poorly because you need more takeoffs and landings for the same route which means more airports.

It's an adaptation for lower overall traffic density and simplifies routing, but direct flights scale much better because you can more likely do A > X > D not just A > B > C > D.

It's interesting that Europeans also went live with the Concorde, another 'consortium' product whose technology hype did not match the economics.

To be fair other Airbus models like the A32x line have been phenomenally successful.

> It's interesting that Europeans also went live with the Concorde, another 'consortium' product whose technology hype did not match the economics

The Concorde was ahead of its time. Fun fact: the 747 was designed with its "hump" so it could be turned into a freighter once the Concorde's successors made it obsolete. The assumption was everyone would be flying supersonic by the new millennium. Unlike the A380, the Concorde was assumed to be a vision of the future.

Not Concorde per se - The Boeing 2707 - which Boeing canceled as it became clear that the numbers just didn't make sense.

And the US government cut funding--which of course made the numbers make even less sense.

And also people complained about sonic booms which caused a bunch of rushed legislation and killed the potential market even harder.

Honestly, the extra fuel burn (carbon emissions!) from SSTs would be problematic even today. I'm not sad that aircraft manufacturers instead focused on boring but profitable fuel efficiency instead.

I don't disagree with any of that. Honestly, with modern lie-flat seating (much less Emirates-class luxury) and communication/entertainment options, long-haul flights are still sort of boring but they're comfortable enough to a degree that they weren't when the Concorde was flying. I actually find them a good opportunity to catch up on reading books and watching some movies.

Even if one of these supersonic startups get off the ground (sorry), I expect they'll be in the province of CEOs and investment bankers billing by the hour hopping over to London to close a deal. It's hard to see the economics working for just about anyone else.

I'm still waiting for an airline with Fifth Element style beds for seating.

Lie flat seating is nice, but it takes up so much room that it ends up being quite expensive most of the time. I'd like to be able to lie down and take a nap at the price of a coach ticket.

I'm not convinced that there are other sleeper configurations that are more efficient (from an airline space perspective), comfortable for passengers, and safe in terms of evacuation. It's possible, but even if it worked logistically I'm not sure how many takers you'd get where the choice was to get a coffin-like pod for an entire flight versus a seat. The lie-flat seating gives you the choice between a seat and a moderately comfortable bed.

Admittedly train sleepers do tend to take the coffin approach but the dimensions of the cabin are quite a bit different.

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