The Airbus A380 is delivered – but will it deliver?

The long awaited monster passenger plane, the Airbus A380, is now ready for delivery. In fact, Air Singapore today took delivery of their first plane with much pomp and ceremony. Read about it here at the international airlines news, and read about the financial details at Forbes.com.

Some people have said:

• The plane is too late – the market has moved on, and there won’t be enough orders to pay for it.
• Given the delays and increases in development costs, they need to sell almost double the estimated number of planes to turn a profit.
• Its unlikely the market will be able to absorb the additional planes they need to sell.
• The plane will become obsolete before they sell 400 units.
• The plane is too big – no-one wants to fly with that many people.

In fact, these things were all said of the Boeing 747 when it was introduced to the market in 1970. Some people are saying very similar things of the A380 today. They have obviously not looked at the past and learnt from it. That’s a problem everywhere today, isn’t it?

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