Living (Very) Large

Yet passengers adore these massive airliners for their quiet cabins, modern fittings, smooth ride and spacious interiors — whether they’re flying forty minutes from Dubai to Doha or over seventeen hours from Auckland to Dubai — and for their sheer size. Indeed, they have revolutionised the world of modern passenger experience with bedrooms, lounges, bars, showers and more.

So what’s the future for these aircraft? What has been blocking their wider adoption by airlines? Did they arrive a decade too early? And what are the implications if they disappear?

Early optimism for VLAs wasn’t matched by historical reality

Airbus’ 2003 Global Market Forecast predicted that, by the then-distant future of 2022, “very large aircraft will account for 6% of the world passenger fleet; the same percentage as represented by 747s in the current fleet,” and that by 2022 these aircraft will provide 14% of all seats in service.”

“By 2022,” the forecast continued, “in order to sustain profitable operations in the face of maturing markets, continuing severe price competition, and increasingly stringent infrastructure and environmental constraints, airlines will need a total of almost 1,200 very large and economical aircraft like the A380. Just 18 will be recycled back into the fleet after being replaced by their initial operators (ten of these being aircraft delivered during the 20-year forecast period). Over 70% of the new large aircraft delivered will be in the 500- and 600- seater categories. The remaining 30% of demand will be satisfied by some 200 450-seaters leaving only 130 aircraft in the 800- and 1000-seater categories. The average capacity of all deliveries will be 559 seats, very close to the 555 3-class seating configuration of the A380.”

The market has moved on, clearly. Apart from only just over three hundred very large aircraft being produced to date, just Emirates’ two-class A380 configuration exceeds the forecast average capacity. Most A380 configurations sit in the high 400-passenger range. Outliers include Singapore Airlines’ 379-seat version and Korean Air’s 407-passenger layout, and will almost certainly include Malaysia Airlines’ pilgrimage charter-focussed aircraft.

Current market forecasts aren’t quite as rosy, but still don’t paint a wholly positive picture for very large aircraft.

Changes in onboard product have reduced VLA passenger numbers

A large part of the reduction in seat numbers comes from the fact that premium cabins are growing in real estate. Among the airlines retaining first class suites — all VLA operators with the exception of Emirates’ two-class A380 subfleet — these products are growing in size, whether located on the main deck or the upper deck.

Business class, too, requires more floor space as fully flat beds with direct aisle access become de rigeur. Early A380 and 747-8I adopter Lufthansa has already replaced its angled lie-flat seats on the A380 with an only slightly more competitive fully flat bed without direct aisle access. Air France and Korean Air retain their angled lie-flat seats on their A380s, even while the Korean carrier’s 747-8I sees a staggered fully flat bed with direct aisle access in business.

The rise in premium economy, and its rollout among VLA operators in particular, also reduces the overall seat count. Singapore Airlines operates a 379-seat, four-class A380 with twelve first class suites, 36 premium economy seats, and 245 economy seats on the main deck, plus 86 business class passengers upstairs, a reduction of 40 overall seats compared with the configuration without premium economy.

Meanwhile, the airline’s low-cost long-haul subsidiary Scoot has 375 seats in a Boeing 787-9, split between 35 ScootBiz seats similar to parent SIA’s premium economy, and 340 nine-abreast economy class seats.

And that’s a problem of economics for the A380 in particular.

Airlines find it hard to sell spacious A380 seats against densified twinjets

Over the last ten years, standard economy class has become much more dense, with nine-abreast Boeing 787 and 10-abreast Boeing 777 configurations the norm. Despite attempts to rationalise away the fact that these ultra-narrow seats are just physically smaller, the cabin width measurements don’t lie: among the ten-abreast aircraft, the 747-8I is 24cm wider than the 777, while the main deck of the A380 is 66cm wider than Boeing’s twinjet.

That said, a moment on the accountants’ lips becomes an aircraft interiors lifetime on passengers’ hips.

Between wider aisles, wider seats, wider legroom, and enough space for every flyer to fit their feet flat on the floor, there’s a lot to be said from a passenger experience viewpoint for these larger jets.

That’s despite an attempt by Airbus in 2015 to raise interest in a 3-5-3 eleven-abreast main deck configuration, a move that seems largely to have fallen on deaf ears after a photograph taken by your author of the need to sit practically side-saddle in window seats on the layout went viral.

Yet there is hope for VLAs here too. Airbus forecasts an annual US$130bn in ancillary revenue by 2020, and as airlines seek to capitalise on that trend we can expect to see more spacious seating made available — in the extra-legroom economy sections like United’s Economy Plus in particular. That will need to come with improved ways of selling these extra options to passengers, but this improved merchandising is certainly possible.

And densification has worked before. The Boeing 747 on launch was largely operated with a nine-abreast 2-4-3 or 3-4-2 configuration, including by Qantas. The industry then solidified around the ten-abreast, 17” economy seat on the 747, even while the Douglas DC-10/McDonnell-Douglas MD-11, Boeing 767 and Airbus A300/A310/A330/A340 widebody cross-section offered more spacious seating.

Densification will make VLAs more attractive

There’s a point at which decreasing density on an aircraft of the size of a Boeing 777-300ER (let alone an A330-200) starts making a twinjet inefficient in terms of overheads like slots, terminals and crew. Examine Singapore Airlines’ increasingly sparsely outfitted four-class Airbus A380, which has 379 seats (12 first, 86 business, 36 premium, and 245 economy, compared with 264 on the four-class Boeing 777-300ER (4 first, 48 business, 28 premium economy and 184 economy). Adding less than a third of extra capacity by moving from 777 to A380 is not the kind of gaping chasm that many VLA naysayers might suggest.

Airbus is offering five key “cabin enablers” for A380 densification. First, a combined crew rest compartment can release three premium economy seats, five economy seats and one pallet back to the airline. Second, moving main deck premium economy from eight-abreast to nine-abreast adds an extra seat in every row, and means sacrificing just 18 seats to create a full zone of premium economy compared with economy. Removing the upper deck sidewall stowage can, with certain business class seats, add ten extra seats by increasing the angle at which the seats are pointed away from the centreline. An alternative, less spacious stair-galley module at the rear of the aircraft can add fourteen seats, while eleven-abreast economy adds ten percent extra seating at one fell swoop.

Some of these are passenger experience neutral. Few passengers ever use the stairs on an A380, the combined crew rest compartment adds seats where the access is, and with the amount of storage in business class seats these days it would seem that removing the extra sidewall seats would be barely noticed.

But no airline has tried a 3-3-3 premium economy class, on a VLA or any other aircraft. Do the extra few seats kill a golden passenger experience goose? Similarly, Airbus and A380 operators have made much of the comfort level of the superjumbo’s economy class, even while many of them operate ten-abreast Boeing 777 and nine-abreast Boeing 787 aircraft, which are much narrower than the eleven-abreast A380 seats. And Airbus has been burned by media opinion before with its wider aisle seat plan on the A320 family, where middle and window seats would each shrink by an inch of width (to the Boeing 737 standard) while the aisle seat grew by two.

Boeing, meanwhile, hasn’t gone as far as Airbus in densification terms, although a fair amount of that work has been done over the years with previous versions of the 747. Remember Qantas’ Captain Cook Lounge taking over the entire upper deck of early jumbos sporting the Red Roo, later to be swapped out for the exclusive mini-cabin in business class?

Part of the problem with densification is that VLA passenger experience is superlative

Economy class seats in the ten-abreast layout can be up to 19” wide, a full two inches wider than a nine-abreast 3-3-3 Boeing 787. Business class on the upper deck is an efficient and effective 1-2-1 to give direct aisle access on the more forward-thinking carriers, whether in a staggered seat like Emirates’, an outward-facing herringbone like Qatar Airways’, or in Singapore Airlines’ uniquely forward-facing design. Premium economy can be offered in a 2-4-2 layout downstairs or a 2-3-2 configuration upstairs, and first class’ upstairs-downstairs split shows the flexibility of the VLA cross-section.

The halo effect, too, is real. When was the last time you read an article about Etihad that didn’t mention The Residence, the better-than-first option with a separate bedroom and its very own shower. Or, if you cast your mind ten years back, what articles talking about Singapore Airlines didn’t mention its then-revolutionary suites for years? And how many people talk about the Boeing 747 without referring to the uniquely shaped nose or upper deck?

The concept of ultra-high density Airbus A380s operated by leisure or charter carriers, however, has not yet come to fruition. Beleaguered Malaysia Airlines, however, is looking to cut its mainline capacity, and having been unable to unload its A380 fleet to another airline is planning to create a pilgrimage-focussed subfleet for the Muslim world. With Emirates already operating regular mainline Airbus A380s to the hardstand at Jeddah’s hajj terminal, and turnaround times less of a pressing focus on many charters, the infrastructure questions are already answered, although those around profitability still remain.

Interestingly, while Boeing 747-8I passenger experience tends to be above average in business and first class, economy and premium economy are very average. The original Boeing 777 layout with its 18” wide seats in a 3-3-3 layout beat the 747’s 3-4-3 configuration with its 17” wide seats, although of course the 777’s fall from pleasant and spacious to high density has meant the 747 now looks less unpleasant.

Even in the pointy end, the 747-8I’s few customers haven’t demonstrated particularly revolutionary passenger experience, although some have adopted existing standards.

Lufthansa launched its first fully flat business class bed (based on B/E Aerospace’s Diamond product), although it had to rethink the rollout, both in terms of density (the later-developed 747-400 refit went 2-3-2 on the downstairs section compared with 2-2-2 on the 747-8I) and in terms of amenity (the V-shaped “footsie class” proved and remains unpopular with Lufthansa’s largely business travel market for business class.

Korean Air, meanwhile, launched its first fully flat bed with direct aisle access (again a B/E Aerospace seat, this time the Apex staggered product) and a first class product in the nose that can charitably called unique, and which quickly earned the monicker “cubicle class”.

And while the nose is certainly a delight to fly in, it hasn’t seen the kind of revolutionary first class passenger experience that the A380 brings.

The 747-8I’s time has come and gone, and wasn’t ever really here in the first place

From a customer point of view, the 747-8F has been modestly successful as a cargo aircraft and may well continue to be so if Boeing can persuade operators that they prefer a four-engined new aircraft rather than, among other options, the 777-200LR-based 777F freighter. The ongoing soft cargo market and low price of fuel, however, suggest that this argument is unlikely to be a success.

In a poetic turn of events, the cargo market into which the original 747-100 was supposed to transition following the debut of supersonic longhaul flying is the market that is sustaining the 747-8.

It’s a fairly open secret within the industry that Boeing has, to an extent, been keeping the 747-8 line open just as long as it takes to build the replacement Air Force One presidential aircraft to succeed the 747-200-based current models — rather the ultimate prestige project.

While few expect the disquiet at the head of the current US regime to ultimately prevent a 747-8 Air Force One, there are no other VLA options since Airbus declined to field an option for a politically charged bidding process. Questions remain for Boeing about the point at which getting sledged by its very public customer turn into a PR negative rather than a prestige positive.

Airports are the key constraint to the VLA market, but not in the way expected

When the A380 was studied, developed and announced, the accepted wisdom within the aviation community was that the sheer size of the A380 would be an issue, although despite a good few well-publicised bumps and dozens of redeveloped terminals, this hasn’t been the key problem in most airports. Key spaces like British Airways’ Terminal 7 (also used by Qantas and other airlines) at New York JFK preclude the use of the A380.

A reduction in slot-based demand, unpredictability of airport expansion, an increase in bilateral agreements, and the spread of open skies, however, has suppressed a fair amount of the concurrent demand for VLAs. Essentially, if an airport is slot-constrained, airline without a dominant slot position want to use the largest aircraft possible. This is why, for example, London Heathrow, Hong Kong and Los Angeles LAX see so many A380s, even though HKG hometown carrier Cathay Pacific isn’t an operator, LHR dominant British Airways only has a few, and no US carrier operates the A380.

The continuous political game of keepy-uppy around expanding airports hasn’t helped either. A VLA is a major investment, and airlines want to be sure that it makes sense to fly a superjumbo for a decade or more. Both BA and Cathay have said, in more or less public ways, that the uncertainty around airport expansion at Heathrow and Chek Lap Kok have affected their aircraft purchase and lease patterns. But Cathay Pacific flies five Boeing 777-300ERs to Heathrow, three of which depart in the 40 minutes between 0100 and 0140. There’s no passenger market reason for this, although cargo market dynamics mean that there are benefits to flying more 777-300ERs than fewer A380s.

Ironically enough, it’s noise and overflight campaigners who have led to airlines retaining their older aircraft owing to the uncertainty that government inaction has created. While Heathrow is the clearest example of this trend, Sydney is another.

The replacement generation will be key for the A380, but less so for the 747-8I

Existing operators have already started to replace their initial A380 fleet. Singapore Airlines has already declined to renew the leases on its early models, owing to a combination of performance improvements from later deliveries, softening demand, increased competition, and the Asian low-cost/long haul low-cost carrier revolution. SQ will take its remaining A380 orders as replacement rather than expansion aircraft, making very clear the question about whether there is indeed a second-hand market for the Airbus A380.

Emirates, too, is asking itself the hard questions about the superjumbo’s future. It seems very unlikely that the Dubai supercarrier will shrink to a point at which the A380 is not efficient from a size point of view, particularly given its decision to build an A380-focussed concourse at its main hub, and since bilateral capacity agreements still tend to focus on flights rather than passenger numbers.

The question for Airbus is how far to the right on its annual calendar planning it can push a re-engining, potential stretch of the aircraft, and neo product launch. The re-engining and neo seem to be a question of when rather than if, while a notional A380-900 — which was envisaged when the large wing of the aircraft was created — seems a greater stretch. For Airbus, the further right it can push the A380neo, the better, especially if that creates additional demand for the current A380ceo.

But it’s a rare airline that wants to gamble on sustained above-average demand for longhaul international, especially given the trials and tribulations the industry has sustained, and particularly given the unprecedented externalities that the UK and US political systems have created in the past year.

China could be the exception — only China Southern operates the A380 at present — but there too, government policy means only one Chinese airline is permitted each international city pair route. While this spurs demand at an A330-200 or Boeing 787-8 level to secondary cities, as Australian airports have seen with growing services to cities many people need to look up on the map, it suppresses demand between some of the largest conurbations in the world and other major international hubs.

There’s a bright future for VLAs, but will the A380 and 747-8 make it there?

With growing populations, and particularly an increase in developing market middle classes, but with a concomitant reluctance to expand runways and increase slots, it seems certain that international air travel will continue to grow, and that very large aircraft will be a key part of that growth.

Indeed, very large aircraft may have arrived in our skies before their time. If Boeing is trying to keep the 747-8 alive until Air Force One, Airbus is trying to keep the A380 alive until the market has grown sufficiently that it becomes a backbone rather than a flagship. Densification efforts and in-service performance improvements may well get it there, and there is precedent for more than one neo-style re-engining in an aircraft’s history. The supposed A380-killer 777X is indeed a second-generation evolution of the now-venerable Boeing widebody, whereas the A380 is still in its first generation.

Will the VLA make it? From a variety of standpoints — growth in global commercial aviation, improving passenger experience, creating true economies of travel at a larger scale, and the just plain wow factor of watching a very large aircraft take to the sky — let’s hope so.

Will the VLA make it? … Let’s hope so.