From: Ad 

Gary Britt wrote:
> First comes the order announcements with great fan fare and publicity.
> Later come the order cancellations.  That's been the Airbus A380 story
> so far.
>
> LOL,
>
> Gary
>

Nah they're now building them.

& the major airports ain't getting any more slots but....the number of
passengers continues to grow. Square that circle Tonto.

http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9283659

"No place to land

One of the biggest problems any airline faces in launching a new service is
obtaining landing and take-off slots, especially at the most popular
airports. The traditional method of allocating slots involves a scheduling
committee made up of airport and airline officials. At Europe's busiest
airports runway slots are administered by an independent slot co-ordinator.
In America some trading of slots is allowed. The new open-skies agreement
between America and the EU is supposed to let more carriers into more
airports, but that is not how it works on the ground.

The slot co-ordinator for Heathrow, for instance, says demand already far
outstrips supply. Incumbent operators claim “grandfather rights” over 97%
of all slots, and most of those left are at times unsuitable for
transatlantic services. Even when Heathrow's long-awaited new Terminal 5
opens next year, runway capacity will remain restricted. But it is possible
to exchange slots among airlines. That has created a grey market at
Heathrow in which swaps are usually accompanied by undisclosed payments.

London Heathrow and Gatwick, Paris Orly, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf and Milan
Linate are already desperately short of capacity. By 2010 another 15 or so
European airports will have joined them. Britain's Civil Aviation
Authority, among others, thinks slots should be auctioned to airlines and
then traded in a transparent secondary market to encourage better
utilisation of a scarce resource.

For now, given enough patience—and the wherewithal to stump up œ10m or
so—an airline might be able to obtain a pair of reasonable take-off and
landing slots at Heathrow under the existing system. But it would have to
repeat the trick on the other side of the Atlantic.

“Demand right now is overwhelming,” says William DeCota, aviation director
of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. With three big airports,
JFK, La Guardia and Newark, all within 25 miles of the Statue of Liberty,
this is one of the busiest airport systems in the world. Those three
airports already handle just over 100m passengers a year, a total forecast
to rise to 125m or even 150m by 2015. But the amount of airspace is fixed
and there is little room to expand on the ground—even if local
neighbourhoods were willing, which almost invariably they are not.

Yet, says Mr DeCota, “we are convinced we can make much more efficient use
of the ground and air.” This includes the use of bigger aircraft. Even
though many flights are full, the average number of passengers on each
aircraft using LaGuardia, the airport closest to downtown Manhattan, is
only 68. The aircraft are too small, and there is little incentive for
airlines to bring in bigger, more modern ones, says Mr DeCota, because “I
can't price the airfield to encourage efficiency.” What he would like is a
combination of market mechanisms and efficiency rules, such as that
carriers must use their departure gates at least once every hour—or make
them available to another carrier."




Adam


> Ad wrote:
>> http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=21120
>>
>> "Qatar Airways announced an order for three Airbus A380 superjumbo
>> airliners and confirmed an order for 80 mid-sized A350 aircraft on the
>> first day of the Paris Air Show on Monday.
>>
>> The planes would be worth slightly more than 18 billion dollars (13.4
>> billion euros) at catalogue prices.
>>
>> The order for 80 A350s, first announced in March this year, is worth
>> 17.2 billion dollars at catalogue prices while three A380s would be
>> priced at 957 million dollars, according to Airbus sales figures."
>>
>> Interesting that the main US base in the Gulf chose airbus inc the A350.
>>
>> Oh &
>>
>> "Also on Monday, a source said that Dubai-based airline Emirates, the
>> biggest single client for the superjumbo, would announce an order for
>> up to 10 additional A380s."
>>
>>
>>
>> Adam

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