Yesterday, Air China bought five (5) Boeing 747-8i Intercontinental aircraft (apparently, as a “free gift with purchase” or something). They join Lufthansa and Korean Air in voting with their checkbooks for Boeing’s totally redesigned 747.
For years, the A380 has been held up as the new “Queen of the Skies”, but is it really? A380 sales have fallen off of a cliff in the last few years. In the last few months, cancellations have far exceeded orders.
More importantly, nearly half of the outstanding A380 orders are from one airline – Emirates. While Emirates seems to be moving from strength to strength, it remains to be seen whether they will actually take up this massive order along with the dozens of additional 777s and A350s for which they have spoken. This is a lot of egg in one basket for the A380 program.
The other day, a QFA380 had to make an unscheduled stop in Adelaide on its trip from Singapore to Melbourne. Ran out of gas. Headwinds. Of the 450 seats about, only 239 had found buyers.
This is the same circumstance that made the original 747 such a money loser. It’s just too damned big for most routes.
Right now, the A380 (which was delayed into production by nearly four years has had 234 firm orders of which 46 have been delivered. That’s 46 deliveries in four years. Boeing drops more 737s off the flatcars in a year than that.
Of those 234 orders, 90 are from Emirates.
The 747-8, which just had its first flights a few weeks ago, has garnered only a handful of buyers, although the freight version has a larger take-up.
The 747-8 has a fair amount of commonality with the 747-400, of which 664 are flying today. Most are approaching twenty years of service, but the 747 airframe has proven itself to be a very high-time performer. TWA operated some 747s to nearly 100,000 cycles, which far exceeds any other airframe’s performance.
The 747-8, in other words, will require fewer accommodations to fly. With the complete redesign of the wing (the most expensive and hard to engineer part of any airframe), new engines based on GEnx technology from GE, LED lighting, higher capacity electronics (meaning lower electric consumption) this ship should be able to operate at significantly lower cost per seat mile over a longer range than the 747-400 it replaces. 51 one more passengers, 26% more cargo volume, ability to operate into any current 747 airport, commonality as to tooling, some parts, some maintenance and a great deal of it as to crews.
So far, Boeing has brought in 76 total orders for the 747-8 (F and i versions together). That’s since project launch in 2005. The A380 had a five year head start, and if one backs out the Emirates order, they’ve sold 145 ships.
There are several very good articles out there regarding the advantages each of the A380 and 747-8i have over the other. From the pilot’s perspective, the 747-8i has a much more powerful thrust to weight ratio than the A380. The A380 has a maximum range of 15,000nm to the 747-8i’s 14,800nm – the A380 appears to have a lower fuel burn per seat mile, BUT -
If you can’t fill it up, what good does dragging empty seats at lower cost do for you?