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Lockheed A380 - The 900 Passenger Double-Deck Plane In The 90s That Was Never Built.
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- čas přidán 17. 08. 2024
- Before the A380, Lockheed Martin had an idea for a double checker super transport plane. An insane aircraft designed in 1996 that was bigger than a 747, carried more passengers than an A380, and would have dominated the skies. Let's explore this never built aircraft.
-------------------
0:00 - Intro
0:31 - The Problem With Airports
2:07 - The Very Large Airplane
3:02 - Passengers And Cargo
4:03 - Range
5:10 - Why was it never built?
6:58 - What Happened Next?
Back in the early 90s there was a problem with airports. Air travel was increasingly becoming popular and airlines were struggling to get enough airport landing slots for all the demand. Some airports like Heathrow were utterly full and were selling landing slot pairs for millions of pounds.
Thus if you could not increase the number of planes landing at airports, then it was time to make the planes bigger. Boeing had started the trend with the Boeing 747 and Airbus was following with the A340 series. Lockheed Martin, who had left the commercial aviation division after its L1011 trijet design, decided to think of the next logical step in aircraft design.
They created a program called the Large Subsonic Transport, a series of designs for an aircraft that would be the natural evolution of the Boeing 747.
This aircraft would solve the problem of limited airport capacity, but naturally, fill rising demand in places like China and be the next military aircraft for the US air force.
The design that they came up with was this - the Lockheed Very Large Aeroplane.
It had a takeoff weight of 1.4 million pounds or 635 metric tonnes with four powerful engines. It had a wingspan of 282 feet (85 meters) with folding wingtips, much like the Boeing 777X today that brought it down to 211 feet (64 meters) the same as a Boeing 747.
It was 262 feet long (79 meters), making it one of the longer planes around in the world today. Needless to say, this aircraft would have dominated the airports around the world and required modifications to runways and gates like the A380 would ten years later.
It would have carried around 900 passengers onboard, with 450 split on each deck in a three-class cabin configuration. This aircraft was impressively wide, so passengers might have found themselves in a cabin 17 seats acorss, or 3 - 4 - 3 - 4 - 3 configuration with four asiles.
Lockheed Martin also planned for a cargo version of the aircraft with intermodal containers.The plane would have been able to hold 16 of them on the lower deck, and still carry 450 passengers on the upper deck.
In the design document, the plane only had a range of 3,200 nautical miles, or 5,900 km. This is shockingly small compared to the Boeing 747 with 7,730 nautical mile range or 14,320 km, or the Airbus A380 that could fly 8,000 nautical miles or 15,000 kilometers. Flights between London and the New York, a distance of 3008.39 nautical miles or 5571 km would have been possible but routes over the pacific would have to land in Hawaii. This would have made it unpopular for Asian airlines and those in the middle east as it could not fly far enough.
Lockheed Martin was optimistic however, and believed that they would have a market for around 280 to 370 aircraft. For comparison, the Airbus A380 only sold 242 units, 38 less than the minimum number predicted for the Lockheed martin very large airplane. Each of these aircraft would cost around $200-300 million USD, which is around half a billion dollars in 2020.
For once, an aerospace firm showed hubris and the report Lockheed Martin admitted, it had neither the resources nor the knowhow to build the plane. It suggests that it would have to partner with Boeing AND Airbus simultaneously to bring it to the market. A total development cost of $18 billion US.
There were several other disadvantages to the design.
First it would be incredibly nosy during takeoff and landing.
It would also create a considerable air vortex that would delay planes landing or taking off behind it.
The aircraft would require all new gates to be built and new service vehicles to perform turn around tasks. It would also take a long time to board.
It was so heavy that it would crush most runways, and if it landed in the sea during an emergency, it would sink almost immediately.
Speaking of emergency, it was apparent that passengers would have a difficult time evacuating.
Lockheed Martin was not entirely sure how it would fly in the sky.Alas, this proved all too much for the company that had only recently moved out of commercial aviation and the project was shelved.
And Lockheed Martin made the right move. Airbus would go-ahead to build the A380 and it would never really be that successful beyond initial orders, and the world of superlarge aircraft came to a close. Today, point to point travel with ultra-efficient aircraft are all the range, and the Lockheed martin dream has become a vision of a forgotten future.
oh man that old video voice echo! I can't unhear it! Come join me in discord :)
discord.gg/gnxs7NDJZU
Likely they’d stop in Anchorage, not Honolulu. Most air freight now does.
Echo...Echo..Echo.
“If it landed in the ocean it would sink immediately” that might be one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard about a plane
I love that line!
In all fairness most planes even large ones would actually float for awhile you’d think for how big and heavy planes are they would sink right away but the wings actually help them to float where if landed right and calms seas it could floats for hours at the very least
@@aaronlimitless flight 1549, which was much lighter than this plane, and landed in a calm river, sank in 20 minutes
@@stuartsemail3625 Not really (Wikipedia): "The partially submerged plane [Flight 1549] was moored to a pier near the World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan, roughly 4 miles (6 km) downstream from the ditching location.[28] .... On January 17 the aircraft was barged[62] to New Jersey.[63]"
@@raylopez99 If you had paid attention to the context of that quote, you would see that "partially submerged" means only being held up by its mooring lines, resulting in it resting at a high starboard list a slight tail trim
When the commercial aviation market started to fall apart in 2001, I'm sure the people on this team at LM were relieved they never went further.
I just love when Lockheed Martin designs even a civilian airplane. They always go bold and invent something that changes the industry. Like the Lockheed Electra was the first big turboprop, the L-1011 the first plane that could land entirely on its own etc.
Shame they didn't carry on. The L1011 Tristar was the finest wide body aircraft of it's era.
Evacuation is always a problems. For those who don't know, you have to get every passenger out within 90 seconds using only half of the exits.
The wider the body, the harder this becomes. However, having four isles would have increased the chances.
I have worked on the Tristar, the 747 and the DC10. The Tristar was so advanced compared to the other two.
This is the fundamental problem with both the Flying V and blended wing-body pax concepts being rolled out periodically. - fantastic as freighters, lousy at pax evac
@@miscbits6399 ...this is what bothers me about one of the Airbus hydrogen airliner proposals as it is a BWB rather than more conventional configuration.
@@satorumatsushima7991 Are you suggesting the L1011 was garbage?
Never been on an L1011 but worked on the C5 and DC10.. I'd love to see the differences.
When we've got to our destination, and are ready to get off the plane, it would be nice if the same 90 second urgency applied
It may not be as tall as the A380, but it sure is W I D E
I know, it's *T H I C C C*
Massive cockpit size ! They could add extra seats for passengers in there and charge them for extra view
Before 9/11 that would have been a really cool jdea
If I were piloting that thing, I wouldn’t want scummy passengers in the cockpit lol
@@alexs3187 Lol
@@alexs3187 probably would never be approved by the FAA. It would be hard to perforn a sterile cockpit landing with passengers talking or panicking beside you.
But it would be a perfect seat if it was a drone aircraft.
No thanks! I don't want my pilots distracted by curious passengers! I've watched too many episodes of Air Disasters! LOL
"The Plane Have 3-4-3-4-3 Seats Configuration"
Airbus : Write It Down!!
Write It Down!!
Write it down!!
Btw its write that down
Just so you know
@@thepolishtech1552 Btw it's "it's" , not "its" - just so you know, lmao
@@alexverdigris9939 btw it( "it's", )not( " it's" ,)
@@thepolishtech1552 Ha ha, give it a rest now!
Somehow Ryan Air would have found a way to pack in 1300 passengers.
Hmm 900 passengers in 3 class configuration then Ryanair class will be at least 1800passengers.
🤣🤣🤣🤣😂
Lol
Ryanair: make it 2000
ryanair: make it 9 quadrillion
It looks like a flying Shinkansen! It's hard to to think that such a modern and advanced design dates back to the 90s. Love this concept.
Instead of reporting to the flight deck, the pilot would report to the bridge.
You got there before me thinking that too
Wait is a golden factor in aviation
If it was ever built it would have had a different cockpit the original version was just too heavy
@@jamesricker3997 It is weight...
I think the limited range was probably down to the engine efficiency at the time. Today's engines are massively more efficient than they were in the 90s. Another interesting point is that the 737 Max had problems in mounting the engines because the wings were so low to the ground. This design would not have had those problems.
Given GE9X engines its possible this could have been a twin-engine aircraft.
4 GE 90s (the 777's engines) would have benefitted this aircraft. At its weight class 4 of the 747 engines would be under powering it.
The wings aren't low to the ground, the landing gear is just shorter because it was meant for older regional airports without the ground support we have today.
@@cefb8923 Your argument doesn't make sense. Are you telling me that the 737 Max, an aircraft that only had its first customer in 2017, was designed for use with old regional airports without ground support? Even if that were true, what effect would short landing gear have on the wing height? Make it closer to the ground? The Max had to have the engines moved forwards and upwards to maintain sufficient ground clearence.
In the 1960s Lockheed tried to get the L-500 certified but was refused by the FAA. The L-500 was a civilianized version of the C-5 which would have had three decks of passengers minimizing the time to evacuate the plane. The unique military equipment, crosswind gear, air refueling equipment, terrain-following radar, and the rear doors for aerial delivery would have been deleted. As I recall it would have carried around 600 passengers a considerably longer distance than the aircraft described.
the way you read "1990's" is hilarious🤣
y??
He sounds perfect, unlike grating and irritating American accents!
@@anhedonianepiphany5588 oof seems like you took it personal 😭🥴
He say nineniness , nothing wrong just
Funny
Sorry we try to say words the way theyre spelled. So grating and irritating, I know
5:20
is that a tri-jet 747 in the background lmao
Cool, I believe that that format was actually considered. It would be cool if the 747 comes back like that since amount of thrust new engines create are incredible.Good eye BTW
Yup it sure is lol. Actually quite a cool thing. It was proposed during the development of the 747 100/200 as a direct competitor with the L1011/DC10 at the time but was scrapped iirc because of the amount of design work need to replicate the flight characteristics of the other 747s as to not require a large amount of retraining. The idea eventually manifested itself in the form of the 747sp.
I first glanced at it and thought it was a 747, but now that I actually look at it, it is a tri-jet+747. That’s cool, I wish they were real.
You found the hint for my next video 😂
@@FoundAndExplained Really?!
The tails kind of suggest that there were two fuselages turned 45 degrees in opposite directions and then fused together to make the ultra-wide body, very cool!
That's quite a nice 3D model, well done!
Not enough market for this aircraft. If it was built, it would have suffered a similar fate as the A-380.
it would suffer a much worse fate actually.
the market cant support 3 mega jets, meaning each plane would get a smaller piece of the pie.....
Then again, this had potential as a freighter, where the A380 just doesn't
If I had an airline
I’LL TAKE YOUR ENTIRE STOCK
@@shallowabyss515 unfortunately there didn’t appear to be any market for the A380 frater version so it wouldn’t even have that, although using standard TEU may have helped.
Guys perhaps you should not comment if you dont know aviation. The problem with the A380 is not markets. It was sky high operating costs. The DOW was also a factor and the freighter version for the A380 was its limited payload and volume capacity on the MD
This concept itself looks like a moving hub.
on the blue prints there appears to be a common area onboard, very much a hub.!
It looks like the love child of an AN-225 and Thunderbird 2
Really great production value for such a small channel, i'm impressed! The 3-d model looks very good and gives visual cue. Thank you for sharing!
Dude thanks so much! Can’t wait to see you he new video tonight - it’s my best yet!!
I think with a super serious weight reduction program. It would be a lot more feasible. Oh and lets not forget receiving the most efficient/ powerful engines on the current and/ or future market. As well as pneumatic control serfaces. And perhaps emergency floatation devices, for unscheduled water landings. And if course a detachable passenger cabin, with sufficient parachutes. As well as automatic harnesses, for the passengers.
Beautiful rendering!
Please build one of these just for the hell of it. The world needs this.
“Hubris” is the opposite of of what you meant, I believe. Didn’t you mean “humility?”
Good point! I'll correct it in future
I noticed this also. "Hubris" is basically arrogance, "humility" (admitting/accepting your own limitations) would be the correct term.
Just imagine if many airlines still use the spoke to hub method,the A380 could of been as successful as the 747 and we got of even had the 747-500.
And the MD-12
I feel hub and spoke is still the way to go, Boeing only advocated for point to point to destroy the A380 and market their 787, while shooting themselves in the foot by vicariously destroying their 747-8 program and still having Airbus (arguably, the true expert in twin engine long haul jets0 still answer back with the A350. Large airports are getting overcrowded again and it seems like we're forgetting how much more efficient and effective jumbo planes are. In fact, they make our skies less crowded, it's like having more buses taking off more cars, cleaner and clearer streets. Jumbo jets create cleaner and clearer skies, and I bet it won't be long until jumbo jets make a return.
@@HesJustSteven It all comes down to cost and customer choice. Neither customer or airline really cares for what airplanes they fly. The customer just picks the cheapest or fastest flight. A hub-spoke flight is less appealing to a customer who just wants to get home. Theoratically airlines can be incentivized to use larger aircrafts by limiting the ammount of commercial flights in and out of a country. But why would a country stiffle there economic growth, perhaps to save the ozone layer. Less flights could lead to better airlines that actual care about quality and service like back in the days but I dont see that happening easily.
@@HesJustSteven I don't understand what you're saying. So Boeing advocated to change the model, everyone listened and yet it's still the same to this day. But how is that Boeings fault? Obviously it must be better at the moment because they're still using it. Unless all the world's airlines are stupid and are hemorrhaging money just because they're too stubborn to switch back to hub and spoke. Unlikelllyyy.
@@cefb8923 right, at the moment, but eventually, it won’t be so good, before this pandemic, look at how airports are became crowded with people flying more and more. The pro to direct flight is shorter travel times for passengers but the cons are crowded airports and crowded skies. It’s almost like a city ditching public transit for all cars.
Grateful to you and and your team for all the videos
Lockeheed: we need help building large aircraft.
C-5 Galaxy: Am I a joke to you?
I think this was primarily a design study to determine the feasibility of a C-5 galaxy derivative airplane for the civil aviation market. Its design configuration and limitations made not suitable for commercial airline use. So it failed and was dumpster dumped accordingly. This is a good example of why Boeing reconfigured it’s similar competing very large transport high wing anhedral design into the very successful 747 low mid-wing dihedral design configuration. Boeing spent a lot of effort on passenger and cargo layout configuration to accommodate passenger and cargo requirements plus evacuation capability. They also looked hard at a full length upper deck configuration similar to the A380 design and decided against it for a variety of reasons. I think the concept of the large wide fuselage this design promoted is still a good idea, but would need to be reconfigured to accommodate today’s technologies now in use in the current big twins like the A350, 777 and 787.
The high wing anhedral design seems to put the outer engines closer to ground then a low wing configuration. So the possibility to touch done first with an engine on a windy day is higher. And where is the heavy connection between landing gear and wings?
I only know one reason for a short upper deck on 747: The cargo version. Boing did two full decks before. A high, but not wide body has less problems with bending due to the weight of nose and tail. Also for a given wingspan it exhibits more wing area close to the center => more lift which is independent of yaw rotation. Also the tail can suck in more air from the sides then from below which drags the tail down.
@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt the primary reason for the hump and upper deck on the 747 was to allow clearance for the forward nose cargo door to open. A feature the A-380 design lacked. The C-5 also uses its upper deck a a backbone/spine structure to help carry the weight of the main deck. Boeing decided the swing away tail used on other high volume cargo planes was not suitable for a number of reasons. (However the did use the swing away tail on the 747 Dream Lifter.)
The only plausible customer for this I imagine was Carnival cruise line.
I'm so glad I found this channel. Your videos are very interesting and informative
Glad you enjoy it!
it looks like a fly that's squished
I like the idea of high mounted wings on passenger planes.
It is pronounced "L- Ten Eleven "
I’ve fixed that in my next video!
Thanks Tim, it actually hurt to hear it pronounced in the video.
That was embarrassing.
Thank you.
And hubris means the opposite of how it was used. They did not show hubris, they showed humility.
AND???? BARBARISM TO THE IDIOM GRINGOS......
You could always build an operating model for the fun of it. It looks a bit like the Aurora D8. Kewl it is.
Great video! First one I've seen on your channel and im surprised you only have 8.5k subs. Now on the topic of never/yet to be made large aircraft heres a few suggestions I have.
Tu-304 - Started as a design concept in the 90s with a twin engine design and now being worked on as a quad jet design. I believe its kept its 2-X-3-2 triple isle configurationg through its life but I'm not sure. Reason the x is there is I've seen it depitected in models as a 3 and 4. I belive its called the Frigate Ecojet now.
MD12 - Deffinitely a well know one. McDonnel Douglas's proposed awnser to the 747 and was a doubledecker that I belive was a bit smaller in capacity than the current a380.
A380-900 Proposed stretch of the a380-800 that was never built.
A380F - Proposed a380 freighter that actually recieved ~25 orders which were obviously cancelled.
Boeing RC1 - From the early 70s and was thought up to transport oil and other natural resources as opposed to using a pipeline from places like alaska. Was designed to carry 2.3 mil lbs of cargo and had 12 of the jt9d engines that powered many of the early widebody era including the 747 and the dc10.
All of the above are just large aircraft. Theres a whole host of very large groudn effect machiens that were designed by almost every large aircraft manufacturer in the world not listed thatd be interesting as well.
Wow thanks so much for all the tips!!! What a great idea!
What are the three planes at the bottom around 1:35? They've got the same captions as the ones above and they're the ones I'm most interested in!
scrolled a lot to find this comment, I too would like to know
It’s asham this was never built, it looks so much better then the A380.
It looks like a passenger-focused C-5 Galaxy. Not sure why there's such an assertion that they couldn't build it. They made 52 C-5s. I think it was more an issue of the market didn't justify the modifications necessary to accommodate it, which is kind of what killed the A380.
Uses a mercator projection with an oval to display range
Very cool plane that has never lived. I would love to see someone build a flying model of this
Its possible!
Lockheed Martin Very Large Airplane, what a way to name your plane Lockheed, good job 👏👏👏
A fascinating video! Cheers!
Liked and subscribed. Love your channel, total aerospace geek!
Almost looks as large as a flying airport hub. Get other aircraft to dock to it in flight and offload passengers.
BEAUTIFUL model, AWESOME video and BEAUTIFUL narration. Well done man
Love the idea of hauling full cargo containers. That would speed up transport immeasurably.
yes. and would likely be guilty of bringing these planes crashing down fully loaded with 900+ people. huge deaths to get some junk faster. i can see it now. the aircrew assumes the weight of the containers is correct. not realising the weight is not correct. (per each container) example. a container is limited to 44000 pounds. however would likely be loaded with 46000 to 48000. while paper work on the load would say 44450. now 16 containers onboard. thats a potential extra 32000 pounds. i would loved to seen that in an episode of air crash investigations. now thats entertainment. 900+ people go splat. because of money and an idiotic design. lolz carrying semi trailers on a plane... thats the most suicidal thing i ever heard of. and then hauling that with 900 ish passengers. oh hell no. speeding up transit sounds nice. but not at the risk of killing a thousand people in a single flight. or any flight with anybody on board for that matter. container ships are best. they can carry a hundred plus of those containers. besides them containers are designed to float. each container has a refer (an engine blowing out cold air) on it. so each one also has 100 gallon fuel tanks. thats alot of extra fuel to be carrying and to go boom. so if the container ship sink most of the containers will float in the ocean or sea and most containers engines should remain running for some time. thats the theory anyways. god i remember watching stacks of containers fall over killing people at the dock. yet they do float assuming they are not stuffed to capacity. you just wanna get loads of people killed hahahaha. so you can buy one pikachoo hahahaha
@@MrCcragg27 Containers can be weighed..
Still love the L-1011. The A380 is also an awesome ride. Woulda been interesting to see this go further...
That was a beautiful aircraft and so impressive
it was ugly
@@ezan3363 🤣
My father worked in aerospace production from 1950 thru '80. I grew up around amazing aircraft and with every new type I thought, "They'll never get bigger than this one..." Boy was I wrong!!!
Looks like Thunderbird 2. Only without an secret island where it's taking off
Superb video as always, keep up the good work!
Thank you very much!
Reminds me a lot of Thunderbird 2 to be honest
Imagine if this beast are in the next Just Cause series
Just look at who is in charge of Lockheed now. MARTIN!!
Buongiorno! 👋 Back on track in Italy for the third time this season... and what a beauty Imola is 😍
The REALLY wide cockpit window really intrigued me - Would that not have been the ULTIMATE picture window?
Can you imagine? Perhaps they would have made a bubble to make it smaller, but according to the rough blueprints the cockpit was as wide... it doesn't make sense!
remember the flight where the pilots window fly off? and then the captain ended up outside the plane at 30000 feet +. with his legs still caught in the cockpit. his buddies grabbed him and held on. and he rode that way for i think 20 minutes with only his knees and and below still inside the plane? im guessing you never heard about that. that would be a big window to be blown away. would lose more than one person. to the point no one could be in the cockpit if that happened again. here let me bring it up for you. happy ending with no deaths amazingly. even the captain survived. but imagine riding ontop rather than inside. here you go czcams.com/video/bqRWupOv8DQ/video.html and imagine planes loaded with 900+ people. flying to they deaths in a single plane with no survivors. had it been built. i would be watching those 900+ passengers planes crashing in tv documentaries right this instant.
I hope some slight modifications were done with the cockpit design (if it went into service) because it looks so dang horrible, but other than that, this is a pretty cool concept.
It’s so ugly
@@FoundAndExplained agreed
It was terrible in every way lol. just the 4 isle idea alone. That could never work. Evacuation times would be unnaceptable. And what airline would be able to fill such aircraft. It was a fantasy never meant to become reality.
@@reconx86 this is where ejection seats come into play
Man this thing look cool!
What is it with us and not having double decker planes already?!
It only makes sense to have bigger aircraft, not just more and more 737s. Wake up, look at the population growth and it just make sense. Thanks for posting. What a beautiful possibility. 👍👍👍. 4-13-2023
BEAUTIFUL AIRCRAFT,,
This looks like some LM engineers were looking at the old C5 galaxy plans and got thinking of how they could translate some of the structures to a commercial plane
Awesome graphics in the video. I'm sure many militaries around the world, and crazy wealthy individuals would have loved that plane.
Can you imagine a private VIP version? Wow what a palace
It looks beautiful!
I like how wide it is and looks, not for carring passengers.
The A380 had the new RR engines that’s why they have such good range and quite, I bet if you looked at this design again with new technology it might work.
Sure wish I could get a model of this!
In this morden age,I think Lockheed could remove 1 engine from it's L10 11 and well it has a new planes,also maybe update it's systems and your got a new plane which could rival the A330.
I saw purple vent
There is a lot more to re-designing a plane than just removing a engine lol. Even small changes are expensive. I think this plane would be done from scratch. They would never bother altering anything.
If anything, I'm glad Lockheed left the commercial aviation industry for good. The COVID-19 pandemic brought the commercial aviation to a grinding halt, and sealed the fate of large 4-engined aircraft faster than predicted.
build it now that plane looks so much better than normal planes
The limited range and all of the changes necessary for airports to accommodate it were show-stoppers.
Keep making vids. This channel doesn't have the number of subscribers likes and views it deserves. This is the first of your videos I have seen.
Thanks so much for watching :)
They were very creative with that name
The ailerons are not apropriate it seems, no vertical control, but the pilot cabin sure looks like a party deck penthouse
Looks like a flattened 747 dreamlifter
Great stuff!!!
The chonk chart of planes:
Cessna 172: a fine boi
Boeing 737: he chonk
Boeing 757: hefty chonk
A380: MEGA CHONK
Lockheed A380: OH LORD HE COMIN'
0:10 an insane aircraft designed in 9096? I didn't realize time had advanced over 7,000 years, wow
Ahh yes, a very revolutionary name
*very large airplane*
I thought they should do smaller size. This configuration looks more aerodynamic efficient than today’s design.
You really have great facts man 🤩
Greetings
Glad you think so!
Found And Explained of course I do think so 😁😁
Greetings and stay safe 🤩👍❤️😂🇸🇦
Say, would it be possible to cover each of the other plane concepts at 1:35 in individual videos? Because those planes look absolutely crazy!
Beriev has a concept called the be-2500, much larger than any plane that exists now. Doubt it will ever be built though.
While visiting Boeing factory in Seattle I remember the interior with was 20 ft 1 in!
I remember this model and had always thought why 380 was built and not this one.
Well they should have had less width and more height, there stories.
The amazing thing is that Airbus learned so little from this lesson. When I first learned about the wake turbulence from an A380, I began to wonder where the economy was from the perspective of the airport. Sure, they had more passengers per airliner, but they couldn't land as many of these aircraft on the runway in a given period of time. Given the expense of the modifications required to enable that airliner to land there, was it worth the 10 to 15% bump in passenger traffic?
And in fact, while the 747 can land at over 250 airports world-wide, the A380 was only able to land at 60. This severely limited where the aircraft would be able to perform. Also, the 747 was originally designed as a freighter. However, the A380 was never designed for freight service.
Yes, they got past the issue of range. That short range of the Lockheed is a killer because it severely limits mobility across the oceans. But range alone isn't the problem. The real problem is that precious real-estate called a runway. That's the limiting factor. If you have to wait for the air to clear for several minutes between landings of those super-jumbo aircraft, your economies of scale become a joke. Time is literally money here.
I think Boeing played a fantastic bluff card by continuing development of the 747-8, and this must have made the executives at Airbus lose their minds. They may have been aware of these issues, but they couldn't help themselves. Somewhere in all this history there is enough material for a a fascinating book...
Now that would make a great video! The Airbus A380 Gamble
@@FoundAndExplained plz make it
Airbus committed to the A380 in 1991 - several years before Lockheed's VLA
In any case Lockheed exited the civil transport market with the failure of the L1011 - which nearly broke them. The DC10 broke McDonnell Douglas
The market for heavies is small. The A380 is a halo product which Airbus needed to prove their abilities and did its job. A large chunk of the R&D went into the A350 so the 'loss' on it isn't as extreme as is made out (and unlike Lockheed or Douglas, Airbus wasn't betting the farm on the A380)
Boeing did con airbus into the 380, using resources that could have ben applied elsewhere.
@@markrenton1093 yes and no. Airbus needed the A380 so they could sell fleets of smaller aircraft. They were losing significant sales of A320s to Boeing who would go "We can sell you 737/767/747 and you get economy of operating from one supplier"
This was pre 777 when they committed to it, remember and also pre-ETOPS - where the A340 and A330 showed that there were fundamental splits in demand and philosophy from buyers - americans wanted big twins, asians wanted quads and europeans varied depending if they needed transpacific routes or not
The A380 is and was a "halo" aircraft, like the Bugatti Veyron is VW's "halo" car. They exist primarily to sell OTHER aircraft and whilst the A380 program didn't break even, it kept the orders coming in for the other models
Beautiful.
You did not mention the high wing issue. Removes a lot of top deck windows (which passengers hate) and has structural issues. With a low wing the root is able to take the landing gear.
100% true!
And where does the wing spar go? Right though the upper deck cabin 🤦♂️
I would love to see Lockheed re enter the commercial passenger plane market. The l-1011 was a exceptional aircraft that was poorly timed and delayed by Rolls Royce
It looks so wide that I wonder if the cockpit would become more like a bridge on a ocean liner.
Made my dreams seem more tangible
SOMEBODY NEEDS TO BUILd this in SimplePlanes
6:20 in the middle aisle, what about the middle seat?
That would be a awesome privet jet
May you make a vídeo about the never built passenger version of the An22 Cock?
Projected for 724 passengers AFAIK.
This is a cool aircraft.
Looks stunning
It’s beautiful I would love to see it on the tarmac.
Such a plane would be a great platform for a successor to the C5 Galaxy
01:21 It's called " L Ten Eleven"
This thing's giving me Thunderbird 2 vibes