Plane talk: Why passengers like the Airbus A380 – and where BA may fly it

Small, medium, large or XL? Rationally, the long-haul airline passenger should, when given the choice about the size of plane, opt for as small an aircraft as possible.

On British Airways’ two daily departures from Miami to Heathrow, you can choose between a Boeing 747 carrying 345 passengers; or an Airbus A380 with 469.

My risk analysis says: to minimise the likelihood of delays, go for the Jumbo rather than the SuperJumbo every time.

That is because a significant amount of disruption is caused by your fellow passengers. If someone dawdles too long in duty-free and doesn’t turn up at the gate, their bag will need to be removed from the hold, potentially delaying departure and missing the appointed slot.

Other fellow travellers may dwell for too long in the bar and carry on drinking (possibly illicitly) on board. Or there may be a medical emergency.

All else being equal, the likelihood of each of those eventualities increases with the number of passengers. Go XL (A380) rather than large (747) and you will increase the risk that another traveller will cause a trip-adjusting problem by 36 per cent.

Yet when I was faced with exactly that choice last month, I opted for the A380. Partly that is because BA’s Jumbo fleet is getting long in the tooth (average age over 20) while the SuperJumbos are, relatively speaking, factory-fresh – the first arrived less than five years ago.

But the main motivation is aesthetic: if you can grab one of the 104 economy seats on the upper deck, it’s the most bearable way to travel cheaply on an all-night, 4,426-mile journey.

Seats are eight abreast (as opposed to 10 downstairs and on the 747, and nine on the 787). It’s quiet. And you a strange sense that you’re on a separate plane to the massed ranks on the main deck below. I’d call it upper class if someone wasn’t already using that for business class.

Yet the A380 is easily the rarest wide-bodied plane in the BA fleet (apart from a handful of 767s, which are even older than the Jumbos). Only 12 are flying for the airline.

After the Airbus SuperJumbo production line in Toulouse narrowly avoided shutdown, thanks to a last-gasp order from Emirates, it appears that British Airways may well order some more.

Commercially, buying another dozen of the jets looks rational. As the holder of the majority of slots at the world’s most constricted airport, the best way for BA significantly to increase passenger numbers is to fly bigger planes. But where would they fly?

Routes such as Miami, Singapore and Hong Kong, with two flights a day, could become all-A380 operations rather than using a Boeing 777 for one of the flights – making life much easier back in the duty office if flight crew need to be shuffled. Las Vegas could be ripe for a bigger plane, with seemingly unstoppable growth and strong year-round demand. And to Dubai, upping the gauge and the product could match Emirates’ all-A380 operation. But beyond those, there are no especially obvious candidates.

The former senior airline executive, Laurie Price, questions the concept of very large, four-engined aircraft in a world where twin-jets such as the Boeing 777 and Airbus A350 dominate the long-haul map.

“Some of us were never convinced by the Airbus rationale for the A380,” he tells me. “Seat-mile cost is important, as is capacity, but overall, frequency usually wins out, particularly in more mature markets with a higher mix of business traffic, notably London-New York.” The A380 has never flown between the two cities.

“A380 demand is in part driven by the number of congested hubs, such as Heathrow, etc, but even then, airlines have generally chosen to capitalise on the economics, flexibility and performance of the long-haul twins, rather than invest in the A380.”

Mr Price also says that squeezing ever-bigger planes into fixed-scale airports may be only a temporary measure: “As aircraft get quieter and new navigation/operational techniques further reduce noise, then the objections to new runways will hopefully reduce, allowing even Heathrow to eventually get its much-needed third runway.”

Who knows when that will be? I imagine that Willie Walsh, chief executive of BA’s parent, IAG, has already concluded he could extract value from more A380 for at least another decade. Mr Walsh probably knows where he will fly them. And passengers may even pay a premium for the pleasure – however irrational we may be.

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