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Airbus A380 -- the end of an era

 So Emirate took delivery of the very last A380 ever manufactured.  total production was 251 aircraft.  In a nutshell a disastrous program for airbus.  The total development cost for the aircraft was estimated to be around Euro 25 billion, or about Euro 99 million per actual aircraft delivered.  In short, the total program loss exceeds Euro 15 billion for Airbus.  

What happened?

That's the easy part.  I was part of a team of commercial bankers (there were many teams for both manufacturers) and we estimated that demand for very large aircraft over the next 25 years (up to 2025) would not exceed 400 units, as air travel was changing with more point to point flights and fewer spokes and hub.

I know we were not the only ones with that result, years later I spoke to bankers at other firms who had done the same thing we had for Boeing, and they came up with similar figures.   

When Airbus announced the A380 Boeing announced the ending of the B747 program, over a period of 50 years Boeing sold almost 1,600 units.  Funny enough despite Boeing shutting down the B747 program in 2010 its last order for the aircraft was made 2 months after Airbus's last delivery of the A380.

Hubris was the problem, taken together the B747 and the A380 total very large aircraft deliveries total less than 2,000 units.  Airbus for some reason thought that demand for very large aircraft would be north of 1,200

On the bright side, Airbus has the A319, A320NEO, A220, and  A350.  All these types are very popular

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