How big can A380 get?

The real competitor of A380 is B777-300ER. IIRC, A380-800 has roughly similar range (isn´t it slightly longer?), 120 % fuel burn and 170 % seat capacity of 777-300ER.

I’m very curious as to how you obtained the 120% number. I was under the assumption that the block burn per hour on the A380 was about 29-30,000 pounds versus the 777 at 18-19,000.

I don’t see how you could be talking about burn per seat as the A380 must have a much lower burn per seat than the 777.

More details about the 120% please.

Cut and paste from Wikipedia:

[edit] Airbus A380-900
In November 2007, Airbus top sales executive and COO John Leahy confirmed plans for an enlarged variant, the A380-900, which would be slightly longer than the A380-800 (79.4–73 m or 260–240 ft).[101] This version would have a seating capacity of 650 passengers in standard configuration, and around 900 passengers in economy-only configuration. The development of the A380-900 is planned to start once production of the A380-800 variant reaches 40 planes per year, expected to be in 2010. Given this timeline, the first A380-900s could be delivered to customers around 2015, about the same time as the A380-800F (freighter variant). Airlines that have expressed interest in the model include Emirates,[102] Virgin Atlantic,[103] Cathay Pacific,[104] Air France/KLM,[105] Lufthansa,[106] Kingfisher Airlines,[107] as well as the leasing company ILFC.[108] According to an interview in Airliner World magazine’s December issue, Singapore Airlines CEO Chew Choon Seng revealed at the delivery of their first A380-800 that the airline is keeping their options open with their order, by only defining their first ten A380s as -800s; the remaining nine aircraft could be switched to -900s.

I would say geometrywise a 100×100 meters wouldn’t be impossible. The fuselage length can grow by about one third. The wing would have to grow with root inserts to around 1300 sqm, plus a six-engine configuration would have to be adopted.

Limiting factor for the MTOW is ground pressure. With a 5×6+4 configuration it might reach more than 850 tonnes.

Then six engines with 400kN each – voilà!

And of course not to forget the seats in the basement. 1400 passengers, here we come. 😀

There seem to be two questions:
1. How much can Airbus grow the A380 platform (what is technically possible)?
2. How much of a business case is there to do so?

1. I believe the A380 can easily grow, either in terms of range or payload, but perhaps not both. I don’t see a larger (in terms of capacity) A380 having more range. I refer back to the L1011 program or the A300/310 program, or even the 747 SP for that matter. In this case, Airbus built the short fuselage version first. The current A380, with short fuselage and big wing, is analagous to the SP/L1011-500/A310. A stretched version would be like the 747/L1011/A300. Of course, an engine change might make a huge difference, ala the DC-8-70 series (stretch and range increase).

2. I don’t believe the market will demand a larger A380 soon. It seems the conversations about what is technically feasible never address market risk for the airlines. Its hard enough to fill 550 seats a day, can you imagine trying to fill 900? Especially in a time period where the 410 seat 744 is being run out of the market by the 375 seat 773. During periods of peak travel, it is much easier for an airline to put a second flight into a market to handle the increased demand. Granted, a FEW markets are so capacity constrained that this is not possible, but many are not.

As far as operating cost go, we have the numbers from SQ.

They say that the fuel burn of A380 per seat is 20 % lower than 747-400. Airbus promised 17 % lower, and delivered 20 % lower. This means that the fuel burn per trip is just 0,5 % higher. The 25 % extra passenger capacity is basically free, and comes with extra range, even compared to B747-400ER which only QaNTAS has.

747 is out of production – China Airlines got the last in spring 2005, Philippines cancelled theirs – but there are hundreds of them around.

The real competitor of A380 is B777-300ER. IIRC, A380-800 has roughly similar range (isn´t it slightly longer?), 120 % fuel burn and 170 % seat capacity of 777-300ER.

If Airbus were to produce an A380-800R with 590 t MTOW, how much would OEW increase? How much would fuel burn increase compared to A380-800? And how much would the range increase? How would the range compare against A340-500 or B777-200LR – and how would fuel burn per seat compare?

I came up with about the same figure that you did, 750t.

Well, this is a very crude analysis, but:

The wing loading on a A346 is about 173. This figure is arrived at by dividing the maximum gross takeoff weight by the wing area. 814,000 lb/ 4707 sq ft = 172.93.

The same calculation for the current version of the A380 yields a wing loading of about 136. 1,235,000 lb / 9100 sq ft = 135.71

If one were to run the A380 wing loading out to the same approximate value of the A346, keeping the wing area the same yields a takeoff weight of about 1,574,000 lb.
(1,574,000/9100=172.97)

1,574,000 lb would be about a 27% weight increase from the baseline of 1,235,000.

As stated, this is rather crude, however, some possible further “quick” evaluation might involve plugging in a number for passenger density and trying to come up with how many passengers might be carried by a 1.57 million pound A380. If the fuselage were stretched, the empty weight would go up, and things like beefed up landing gear might be required also. We don’t know how “beefy” the existing landing gear are.

I would note that the current wing area for legacy 747s is 5,500 sq ft, thus the A380 with it’s 9100 sq ft wing is a significant increase.

These considerations aside, on the basis of lackluster sales and the worsening worldwide economy, a larger A380 doesn’t seem to be warranted. Then again, some carrier that is insulated from business reality might want a larger airplane just for the attention it would gain. I doubt Airbus could justify building just a few though, they would have to commit to a larger production run, and that doesn’t appear to be in the offing soon since the current model is languishing.

Bottom line, on the basis of the wing area alone, Airbus built the A380 with considerable growth potential, at least 27% is easily attainable IHMO. The 80 meter box requirement could easily be modified. Someone already posted the news article about LAX basically having to close the airport to allow A380 movement since the wings overhang adjacent taxiways and runways with insufficient separation. If the airport is basically closed already, a 30%larger A380 wouldn’t be that much more of a problem!