Is the A380 Airbus, which was launched yesterday, a sign of aviation's future or its past, asks Gerry Byrne
It seemed too much of a coincidence but, as Airbus proudly prepared to test-fly its newest offering, the A380, Boeing rushed out a raft of press releases trumpeting additional sales for its new baby, the 787 or Dreamliner.
There were deals done in India, where Air India said it would buy 27, and Canada, where Air Canada said it would sell off its Airbus fleet and switch to Boeing aircraft, including 14 250-seat Dreamliner 787s.
Is it sour grapes in Seattle or does Boeing really see the mid-sized Dreamliner as an alternative to the largest passenger aircraft built to date? There are actually very few points of comparison between the aircraft. The new Airbus, of which 154 have already been sold, can carry from 550 up to 840 (at a pinch) and seems an ideal upgrade from the Boeing 747, the original and biggest selling Jumbo.
Boeing's Dreamliner offering, on the other hand, seats 250 to 300 people in a very nice, technologically advanced long-range aircraft which is still pretty much the same size as several other offerings from both Airbus and Boeing. Dreamliner sales were sluggish until the past few weeks when Boeing notched up several good sales.
An airline seeking a 550-800 seater is hardly going to be convinced by an alternative seating less than half. Conversely, an airliner seeking a 250-seater for a "thin" route is hardly going to be swayed by a giant capable of seating three times as many. Or is it? Because Boeing and Airbus are taking bets on the future of the airline business and in the coming months and years, each aircraft company will use its new offerings to sway the opinions of aviation's strategic thinkers.
Airbus is putting its bets on the continuation of hub-and-spoke operations, where large aircraft fly big volumes of passengers to strategically placed airports such as London, Paris, Dallas or New York, while smaller aircraft ferry them on so-called "thinner" routes to smaller destinations.
Dublin's relegation to the latter category is exemplified by two facts. First, no airline serving Dublin routinely uses the Boeing 747 Jumbo which remains, until the A380 begins its passenger service next year, the world's largest passenger aircraft; second, the Dublin Airport Authority is making no immediate plans to alter its runways and terminals to take the new giant Airbus.
Boeing, in contrast to Airbus, has deliberately eschewed producing a 21st-century replacement for the 747 saying that constant upgrades to the original package, now almost 40 years old, will enable it to get a few more good years out of the best selling wide-bodied marque. The closest it comes is the slightly smaller Boeing 777, now entering its second decade in service with the launch of a long-range version.
But, in allowing Airbus to eat its lunch in that market with a far superior mass transport offering, it is also saying that it doesn't believe there is much of a future for large aircraft and is effectively predicting the beginning of the end for the economics of hub-and-spoke flying.
Boeing's conversion to point-to-point flying, which replaces hub-and-spoke with a more random web-like pattern, came more than a decade ago when it and Airbus considered collaborating on a giant 21st-century replacement for the 747.
Saying it had no real future, Boeing dropped out of the partnership after a short time, while Airbus became even more committed to the concept and spent billions developing the new aircraft, which first flew yesterday.
Additional evidence for the future for point-to-point seems to come from closer to home where the world's fastest-growing airline, Ryanair, based its growth on little else. Point-to-point was a major aviation paradigm shift. Traditional hub-and-spoke operations assumed that along with hot towels and boiled sweets, passengers wanted flights which always connected with other flights.
It led to the development of airports where long-range flights on bigger aircraft tend not to leave unless a flock of smaller aircraft had landed delivering passengers from less important destinations. That in turn led to the creation of airline alliances like Oneworld and Star to generate a seamless migration of passengers from one airline to another.
Then along came Ryanair and its many imitators which ignored the perceived wisdom of decades of airline operations and proposed that we simply pick two cities to fly between. If we want to get to a third destination that's our problem, not the airline's. Indeed it's almost impossible nowadays to get a through-ticket to a third destination on a low-cost carrier.
Point-to-point can also deliver huge financial benefits for both airlines and passengers because hub-and-spoke operations can be expensive to run. Not only do airlines incur costs transferring passengers and their luggage to another flight, but timing aircraft take-offs to coincide with the arrival of feeder flights can also be wasteful.
Certainly sales of the Boeing 737 and its Airbus competitors have benefited from growth in point-to-point but Ryanair and EasyJet are unlikely ever to be customers for the Dreamliner which is a long-range airliner more suited to crossing the Atlantic than the Irish Sea. Indeed it is interesting that apart from Air Canada, most Dreamliner customers are in the East, in India, Japan, China and the Far East, and they mostly all have transpacific routes to US cities in mind. No European airlines have bought it, suggesting that what Boeing is really forecasting is Eastern promise.
Indeed, it's unlikely the Dreamliner will be operated by a new breed of long-range low-cost operators. More likely it will be operated by conventional airlines offering business class comfort at a price but offering direct access to smaller long-haul destinations than would be economical with a larger aircraft.
The logic of this argument has not been lost on Airbus. While still maintaining confidence in the hub concept, it has already started work on its next model, the A350. It will be a virtual copy of the Dreamliner.
• Gerry Byrne is a science and technology journalist