Couldn't agree less.. As I mentioned before, A380 is developed with Asian traffic in mind. The airports like LHR and FRA will need this airplane to fly many many more pax to Asia. People in Frankfurt are not stupid.. The long range and fuel efficient aircraft issue has been in the talks for last 2 decades that I know of. There are reasons why that cannot be achieved : 1. Current engine technology is not efficient enough.. 2. The number of people that you will devide the direct operating cost to will be lower. 3. If a very efficient engine technology is developed for the low capacity/ low cost engine, don't you think that will not be used for big airplanes like 744 and A380. Let's face it since day 1 Airbus has been extremely successful in forcasting demand for a certain type of aircraft. In some respects they were more successful on the A320 family compared to say A340 family. (Even though -600 and -500 series are adding more + points to that model). Oh yeah, what happened to Boeing's faster , efficient pax aircraft that they presented as rival to A380??? Hmmm... BAHA Overnighting in O'Hell because of Atlatic Coast Latelines getting me here late. -----Original Message----- From: The Airline List [mailto:AIRLINE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of kurtzke@xxxxxx Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 5:55 PM To: AIRLINE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Airbus 380: They're Doing it Again Right now, if you want (or have to) fly from major US city A to major US city B you do that by flying with an intermediate stop at O'Hell Airport in between. This is called the hub system. The nuns who taught me in grade school would call it temporal punishment for sin. (I first saw O'Hell used as a reference to a certain airport near Chicago by Art Buchwald. But Buchwald was wrong -- there are worse airports elsewhere.) Now that Airbus thinks that international travel will pick up in the future, do they encourage airlines to fly point to point between major international cities? Of course not. When you could fly from major US city to major European city non-stop, Airbus develops the Fat Albert plane that has you fly: US city to O'Hell (US) to O'Hell (Europe) to European city. This is double hub, prohibited I think <tongue in cheek>, by the Unified Code of Military Justice. (Fat Albert comes from a Bill Cosby comedy routine from the 60's). Airbus, like Boeing, ought to ask what is the "next big thing." The next big thing is not huge. Rather, it is likely to be either a very fuel efficient plane (Boeing does have brains; it just doesn't use them) or an economical SST. john John Kurtzke, C.S.C. Department of Mathematics University of Portland Portland OR 97203 503-943-7377