Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal

Re:Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal by martinald on Wednesday December 27, 2017 @03:11PM (#16017643)

What I can't understand though is how it even makes sense at LHR.

A380 requires 'super heavy' spacing between planes AFIAK, as opposed to 'heavy' for 747 and below.

Surely all the gain you get from more passengers is lost as you need significantly more spacing between the plane and the next one? So you might as well just run two 787s instead and extract more point to point incremental revenue?

Please do reply, I've wondered this for a while and haven't been able to have a good answer.

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Re:Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal by jpatokal on Wednesday December 27, 2017 @03:45PM (#16017870)

The difference between heavy and super heavy spacing is only 30-60 seconds (depending on airport), which is a lot less than an additional arrival/departure slot (which come in pairs for obvious reasons).

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Re:Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal by martinald on Wednesday December 27, 2017 @07:52PM (#16019438)

But LHR does 30-50 flights per hour. 60 seconds is a lot of time...

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Re:Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal by SeoxyS on Wednesday December 27, 2017 @10:15PM (#16020064)

LHR has more than one runway.

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Re:Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal by bb101 on Thursday December 28, 2017 @08:42AM (#16021926)

At any time, one runway is used for take offs and the other for landings. It is a really busy airport operating at near capacity.

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