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It IS huge, so big that most airports will have to build new facilities to accomodate it.



Airports began these changes almost 5 years ago, they wanted this change which is why Boeing wasn't able to sell any of it's proposed new 747X and Airbus sold dozens of the A380. It just didn't make economic sense to keep using the 747 fuse. Airbus designed the A380 with Airports. This is what they wanted to do.

It is far easier and cheaper for them to upgrade what is there to handle larger aircraft than to build more of what they have to handle a larger number of aircraft on the ground. Fewer larger aircraft is a great deal more cheaper, easier, and more efficient to accomodate than a greater nunmber of smaller aircraft. Aircraft movements are expensive, and fewer, larger aircraft means fewer movements. Fewer aircraft mean less redundancy -- less gates, less taxiways, and less runways.

Many large airports have long ago reached capacity, which is why many large cities have 2, 3, 4 airports. Airport expansions cost billions; it will cost an average of just $100M to upgrade an airport to handle the A380. Airports built in the last 20 years accomodate the A380 at almost no cost at all.

Will every airport change? No, of course not. Less than 300 airports in the world accomodate the 747 and it's been around for some 30 years. They didn't change because they didn't need to, and most won't change for the A380. Only 2 dozen airports will need to accomodate the A380 by the year 2010 (up to a maximum of 60 depending on final route choices), only 9 of those are in the US. Almost every airport had completed the physical plant changes or had the plans submitted to the FAA by the end of 2003, a long time ago, and 22 airports will be ready by the time they are needed. The only thing that largely remains is ground operations handling; things like catering trucks and jetways that need to reach the upper level. But that's small potatoes compared to the physical plant upgrades.

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I have a feeling it's going to go the way of the Concorde...when Concordes were introduced, lots of airlines were interested and placed orders, but most orders got cancelled before delivery.



Airlines didn't cancel the Concorde because they and passengers didn't want it, they cancelled the Concorde orders because the Oil Crisis made the price of jet fuel increase exponentially. It no longer made economic sense to use them. On the other hand, the economics behind the A380 become more and more apparent everyday which is why orders are still coming in.

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