Airbus gets a new freighter – and its giant door – into the air for the first time Airbus has successfully flown a new freighter based on its A350 passenger jet. The first A350F yesterday rolled down the runway at Airbus HQ in Toulouse, France, bringing the aerospace giant closer to delivering a high-capacity freighter. Airbus already makes a freighter based on its A330, and will happily convert that model, …
Finally, one can get one's household staff and all the appropriate accoutrements to one's pied-a-terre in a timely fashion. It was becoming so very vexing having to wait for the entire canteen to arrive by ship, one felt like one was constantly being served from the picnic hamper. No avocado spork available for the guests, mortifying.
Have two wrapped and delivered at once, my good man.
I believe that the 747F was possible because the basics of the aircraft were originally designed for the US military as a cargo carrier (the contract went to the C5). Boeing made the best of it by swapping to a passenger airliner, and got lucky with the right product, right time. Critical things that then enabled the 747F were cockpit clear of the load deck, front loading door, heavy load bearing floor. None of those three things apply to the 380 as built (apparently there was a 380F concept early on, but it never got built), and retrofitting now would be "new-airframe" levels of development cost. For example, the 380 cockpit is placed exactly where you'd want to put a front loading door. They could possibly stick in a bigger side door (as per the 757F), but because of its size the 380 would run out of cargo weight lifting capacity before it ran out of space, and that means carrying around fresh air and a good chunk of surplus aircraft weight. The 380 is an expensive aircraft to operate hugely so unless fully loaded, so unattractive to freight airlines, and in capacity terms there's relatively little need for mongo-class civilian air freighters (otherwise air freight operators would have pressed for civilianised C5s or C17s). I'd imagine that out-of use 380s would be worth far more for their engines than to be repurposed as cargo.
Maybe I'll be proved wrong, but I'll stick with the view that there will never be a 380F conversion for economic reasons.
Exactly this. The 747 was basically a freighter designed to also be used as a passenger jet. Any 747 ever built could be converted to a freighter after it's use as a passenger jet. The A380 on the other hand was designed solely as a passenger aircraft and structurally is incompatible with conversion to a freighter. It's hull and the floors aren't strong enough for cargo use and reinforcing those is basically akin to building a new hull. Just not worth it.
Indeed - the thought in the late 60s when the 747 was designed was that "Supersonic passenger flight is the future" and thus all the 747 passenger models would no longer be required and could be converted into freighters to keep using them rather than scrapping the lot of them in favour of the SST/Concorde/Concordski
"but because of its size the 380 would run out of cargo weight lifting capacity before it ran out of space, and that means carrying around fresh air and a good chunk of surplus aircraft weight."
It would need a specialist application. Most large trucks run out of cubic capacity before they run out of weight allowance but do just fine in trade.
The A380 is a massive aircraft so it's limited in the number of airports that can accommodate it which could be more of an impediment.
Not happening. They've closed out the programme permanently. Even Emirates offering to buy a large number of a re-engined version with improved wings didn't persuade Airbus to continue with the A380.
As others pointed out, the A380F economics didn't stack up. FedEx was an earlier supporter of the 380F, but even their weight-vs-volume figures didn't work - The main and upper deck would've had to be strengthened a lot, which would've made the plane heavier (and less economical). When Airbus delayed the 380F project to catch up on production of the 388 for their passenger airlines, the freight concept died a quiet death. That's a very similar picture to the recent news of a freight company having converted 7 of Virgin Atlantic's older A340s to freight, and who went pop (because of the economics). Those freighters are all parked up at Bournemouth (5) and Teesside (2).
The 350F is much more capable (and beats the older 742, 743 and 744 conversions and dedicated freighters on cargo volume and tonnage), so if anything, the 350F is the way to go.
I don't think that strengthening the floor between the two decks would have made the plane too heavy. I could see that you save more by removing expansive seating, bathrooms, galley, overhead bins, etc, from the passenger version than you would add in weight by a strengthened floor..
I think it's fairly clear from the article where they think demand will come from: high-value, time critical industrial components.
I love the A380, as actually do a lot of airlines, but demand wasn't sufficient at the time to sustain production. But I'm sure they kept the plans.
"but demand wasn't sufficient at the time to sustain production. But I'm sure they kept the plans"
Like you I think the A380 is a fantastic aircraft to fly on, but I can't see the plans being any further use. Large commercial new aircraft demand is exclusively for twin motors, there won't be the volumes to make it worth tooling up for a revised A380 for a handful of niche uses.
"I think it's fairly clear from the article where they think demand will come from: high-value, time critical industrial components."
This is why having a robust in-country supply chain is important. It's also where the US is declining. There's so many levels to making something such as a computer or EV that it doesn't make as much sense as doing the same thing in Asia where the component parts and many raw materials come from.
How often would a company need to airlift enough time-critical components to make having an A380F worthwhile? Locations are also a big factor. Where's the aircraft, where is the shipment and where is it going? It's no problem to land and take off with a Gulfstream jet at my small city airport. Even flying a couple of them to bring a load of parts someplace would be less expensive than a bigger jet.
I dated a lady that worked for GM and she told me that a typical auto production line being down cost the company ~$125,000/hr. This was a number of years ago. That cost was why it would make sense to have an airstrip nearby or even on the factory property to bring in emergency components to tie them over until the regular shipment arrived. Past a certain point, a train loaded with components derailed, shutting down for a few days can make more sense.
I think the issue with the A380 as a freighter has less to do with design, more with economics. The capacity of an empty A380 is huge, roughly 49% more than a 747.
However cargo weighs a lot more than people per m cubed. Therefore it is quite possible that the weight limit would be reached before capacity is maxed out. Therefore you would be flying a aircraft at say 80% capacity which when you measure fuel use and crewing is less efficient than 2 aircraft, but full capacity.
Secondly one of the issues with a A380 is that its wingspan precludes a lot of non-hub airports. Flying to a major airport like Heathrow or Schipol is expensive, has limited slots and a lot of late night restrictions. So a lot of carge go to smaller airports, which the A380 would struggle to serve. Smaller aircraft fit that model better
(Saying that I live next to East midland airport and frequently see An-124, and we had the An-225 Mriya a few times, before its utimely demise. But these were specifically designed for eastern european airports, where the size and facilities were less sophisticated)
> Airbus has almost finished making a second model, which will be needed as it embarks on the hundreds of test flights required to certify the new plane.
Ha, with an approach as outdated as this, they'll never catch up with Boeing. As any fule knows, you just need a note "Tis is fine" and have it stamped by the FAA. Or just stamp it yourself.
They should put the AN-225 Mriya (Buran shuttle carrier) into production
Why? Airframe materials, design, avionics and engines are decades out of date, nobody wants a four engined freighter never mind a six engined one, and even the military don't need to carry and airdrop four main battle tanks in one aircraft in this age of drone warfare.
The An-124 is equally outdated and already four-engined, needing to be "deeply modernised", so the 225 would need to be as well. The Boeing 747 is an even older and less capable four-engined design. Their main virtue is speed of delivery, over a brand new design.
The current Western fleet of four whole An-125s is seriously inadequate to meet current supply needs. Quite what a major "modernisation" would be expected to achieve I don't know, but for NATO especially there is indeed a need for more and bigger, and sooner rather than later. The 225 design is ready and waiting, and easier to tool up than supergiant autoclaves. That deep mod would likely involve four modern engines.
But really, a fleet of the A350F is the obvious way forward, maybe with a nose door in later versions. I was/am as much lampooning the idea of wading into old stocks with an angle grinder and a reel of multimode fibre as making a serious proposal.
And of course, for the humorists among us, the 225 would offer an even bigger cache of bitbarn fillers.
The main oversize cargo market is served well by AN-124 sized aircraft. The 225 was a welcome addition to the Antonov cargo transport services for very large oversize cargo, but afaik it was never even fully booked and finishing the second hull into a flyable aircraft was never considered economically viable. No-one knows what the current state of that second hull is. Likely it is riddled with bullet and shrapnel holes from the attack on Hostomel airport that also saw the destruction of the original 225.
Mriya had both nose and rear doors... just like its "little" sister, the An-124.
While Antonov is considering looking at the second Mriya once the war's over (well, it'll drag on for as long as the crazy person in the Kremlin remains in power), it would be very much a specialist project and *not* for the military.
We used to get the Beluga flying over our old house and we still occasionally see them at our present house. They are specialised to carry Airbus wings between Broughton and Toulouse. All I can say is that I would not like to try and land one in a side wind.
There is a limited market for mega sized aircraft due to limitations on airport facilities i.e. the 380 cannot use certain airports as it's too big to fit in the terminal spaces. I've flow in a 747-400, and was lucky enough to fly on the top deck (paid for by my employer) but the 380 is just too big for my tastes. Larger and more powerful engines mean that twins can be as big as triples or quads these days for most applications. Hence a lot of e.g. DC10/MD11s have been repurposed as freighters but maintenance of the 3rd tail mounted engine is more expensive than for under wing engines.
I do admit that I can't see how flying a server to a new location would be particularly time sensitive and require more than a standard cargo liner unless you have a sudden need to build a bit barn where trucking the gear in isn't fast enough.
