Airbus will stop building the A380 in 2021
Knowing the state of things and the history of the project I&#x27;m not much surprised by this, yet I&#x27;m a bit taken aback that this indeed has come to pass. I always hate it when a serviceable, if not especially outstanding, aircraft gets shuttered well before it had a meaningful lifecycle in the industry.<p>But from everything I&#x27;ve read (am I&#x27;m no industry expert on the business side) it was a dick-swinging contest from the get-go. Boeing saw that a full-on new spec 4-engine plane was not going to pay itself back; if Airbus execs saw it, they didn&#x27;t let it change their path.<p>&quot;Build it and they will come,&quot; was perhaps the irrational source of motive for pressing on from the beginning. I don&#x27;t recall the market (at the time the project was greenlit) clamoring for a bigger, more efficient, more pax friendly quad-jet. It&#x27;s almost as if Airbus managed to upsell this beast to the carriers that did choose to purchase the ones they have.<p>The shifting winds of route topology from hub-n-spoke to point-to-point were already brewing, and the stair-step jumps in the ETOPS allowances for twins had obviously not yet reached its limit ... but still, they went for it.<p>Well, I hope the ones that are built, and those yet to be built, will run for decades more because they are mighty beasts to behold; that much is true. I know the international departure slots out of LAX and when I remember and the sky is clear I step out on my deck and get to watch them on initial climb-out (it&#x27;s usually Emirates, but sometimes there are others).  They look like freight trains in the sky and are really quiet, but the four engines together make a unique drone that will pull me outside even when I&#x27;m not even planning to take a peek.<p>Farewell, A380; we barely knew thee.