Qantas Finally Cancels Remaining Airbus A380s

I think it's all about the justification for thata amount of capacity. You see them running on high capacity routes and that certainly gives them opportunity to get as many seats as possible to high demand routes with limited slots availability. Such is the case at LHR, seasonally at HKG, SIN and even LAX and DFW. Those are examples of cramming as many seats on the routes where I suspect the possibility for more frequencies are just not there. The 777 maybe more flexible but that doesn't mean a380 was a bad buy. They have the need for that amount of seats and you could argue buying them gave them the flexibility to add capacity at frequencies restricted routes/airports.

I’d imagine any conversion would be commercially sensitive in nature and wouldn’t need to be reported until a fleet announcement is made. If no refund or loss than I’d assume that confidentiality would prevail as it wouldn’t be affecting the books at this point. Airbus has the money, whatever aircraft that pays for won’t need to be reported until a fleet announcement or more funds come/go.

I doubt the 777x is anything to look forward to for people in economy. While some carriers have fitted their existing 777s with 9-across seating (Singapore, Virgin, and Delta among them) ... I somehow doubt airlines ordering new aircraft will, and we will end up with the horrible 10-across seating that is already used on the 777 by airlines like Emirates and Air New Zealand.

I would expect that they'll come out late this year/early next year to say they are keeping at least the 6 744ERs for longer.

A380 is the first option every time I book a flight. Great aircraft (for passengers). Not so good for the airlines, unfortunately. Another plus is the availability to upgrade to First, so I'm a bit sad to learn that Qantas has cancelled the order for the remaining A380's.

But Qantas used to have two A380s a day each way to London - now it's only one, plus the half size B789. So that's a reduction in available seats of 25 per cent overall, though moe complicated by the various individual classes of travel. Hardly a success.

Maybe a little early to suggest the above regarding Project Sunrise. My take is that Airbus may possibly be considering closing out all unfulfilled orders (bar EK's) and that QF has chosen this point in time to formally cancel. Should QF select the A350 (in either the -900 or 1000 variant, or even both), it will be beneficial in that no-one will be able to accuse QF of choosing Airbus 'because of the need to transfer deposits'. This move alone will make QF's selection process considerably more transparent - and somewhat immune from challenge by any manufacturer.

You're definitely 'on the money' that the next few months will be interesting. Like you, I am hoping for an Airbus decision, rather than the heavier B777-8. An 'in-service' frame with known costs is generally preferable to a yet to be certified'paper' airplane with 'proposed' costs. Hopefully QF has learnt a lesson with the initial A380 delays and the even later and longer delays with the 'lateliner' B787's.

Not the case. Both QF and Airbus - along with Rolls Royce (as a 3rd party) - all adopted and conform to International Accounting Standards now. So, this requires reporting - and in fact, may be part of the reason why Airbus could be voluntarily seeking confirmations of non-firmed up orders. 'Commercial Confidentially' may be in place but where frame additions / cancellations, occur, these now need to be financially reported. The same applies to capital expenditure via deposits - since these are usually recorded as long-term assets. Boeing was forced to revise it's order book in this fashion over the last 12 months - and while Airbus 'deferred' it's adoption of said accounting standards last year, they were put in place at the beginning of this year.

Let's not forget the 777 was originally designed over 25 years ago, I think it only fair we keep open minds for the 777x.