With the QANTAS A380 fleet being grounded for several days, one thing was clear when it comes to this aircraft.

When one of these aircraft becomes unavailable, there can be a huge number of people needing to be cared for.   QANTAS’ A380 carries as much as 450 passengers and their typical equivalent 747 carries just 307 passengers.   For most routes that the A380 would fly, you would require generally 2 other long haul aircraft to deal with the extra burden.  By 2 extra, I mean you would need two 747-400s to get passengers cared for on a LA-Sydney route or two 777-300’s or at least two 777-200s.

But my larger point is that when you fly this aircraft, a cancellation can inconvenience from about 450 to 550 passengers with just one flight cancellation.  That’s a lot of people to take care of and airlines had best have a contingency plan to deal with such an eventuality because it is not like a single 737-800 cancelling.  It’s not even remotely like a 767 or 777 cancelling.  

It doesn’t appear that QANTAS has had much of a handle on dealing with their customers problems either.  To be fair, it’s not easy to ground those aircraft and then dispatch 747s to outlying destinations to take care of passengers.  The flight time alone between Sydney and LA is generally well in excess of 14 hours.  And it’s not easy to keep a spare A380 laying around either.  It’s not even easy to keep a used 747 lying around for backup. 

Then  again, it’s not like there will ever really be a huge fleet of A380s in the world either.  Unless Emirates defies all predictions and really does take delivery on all of their orders.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax