Mark Lapidus is CEO of Amedeo, a leasing firm with with 20 A380s on order. Selling the A380 has proven to be a complicated task. The aircraft is the largest passenger airliner and for many airlines, the A380 is intimidating. Yet, among the users of the aircraft there are voluble fans, like Emirates. One of the leading A380 fans is Mark Lapidus, who thinks many airlines do not understand the aircraft’s capabilities (but should and could benefit from it) and many who have deployed the aircraft are not optimizing its capabilities.
How lucky for Amedeo that Emirates agreed to take A380’s early.
Yes definitely. The road Amedeo is on will not get any smoother though.
Interesting discussion, although I still think VLA market is a small one and it is not likely to expand significantly.
The reality is that the two new big twins (A350-1000 and 777-9) offer double digit percentage unit cost (seat-mile cost) advantage compared to the A380-800 in its current form.
While I agree that Emirates seems to be able to exploit the A380’s unique feature, that is BIG, I have serious doubts that other airlines can bear the risk of not having high passenger load on the big aircraft.
Also, I notice that Emirates attract a hell lot of passengers by offering lower fare when passengers accept to go through Dubai. In several occasions I tried to “benchmark” the fares from the UK to South Africa and from other places to Asia. The result was impressive. The difference of fare could be up to 500 euros in some specific cases for economy class. Again, I insist that the trip must be with a transit in Dubai, which add several hours of connection, but who cares about five hours when you are going on holiday for three weeks in Thailand?
So, I insist again to express my opinion that the (quad) VLA market is small and is not growing as some people would like to believe.
The very unique feature of the 747-8 freighter allows it to survive and maybe to provide a lifeline to its passenger version brother.