Flight Report: Airborne in an Emirates A380 at SFO

[On Your Six]

Nice report from a lucky passenger on the EK A380 demo flight out of SFO yesterday. There are some great pictures of the bar-area and the showers. Anyone know if EK is planning to send them anywhere else in the US on scheduled service beyond JFK?

See below:

http://telstarlogistics.typepad.com/telstarlogistics/2008/08/flight-report-a.html

 

[Gillegan]

Nice report from a lucky passenger on the EK A380 demo flight out of SFO yesterday. There are some great pictures of the bar-area and the showers. Anyone know if EK is planning to send them anywhere else in the US on scheduled service beyond JFK?

I think that a lot is going to depend on what kind of range they can get out of it once the "bugs" have been worked out. In a recent article, Tim Clark was quoted as saying they expect to get the promised range by the time the 2012 aircraft start to arrive.

Emirates is pretty good at putting the passengers in the seats so provided the plane can make it to the various airports in the U.S., I would expect to see it there. They would like to take it to LAX and SFO but it remains to be seen if the airplane will ultimately have the range to do it with a reasonable payload. Typhoon was comparing the flight plan data between the 380 and a B777-300ER on the DXB-JFK leg and the 380 seemed to burn a lot of fuel for its payload compared to a B777.

Another factor in the 380 economics that no one is talking about is the absolutely subterranean prices that Emirates is paying for them. I've heard "rumors" of prices in the $100 million range. If so, that would have a big effect on the airplanes profitability for Emirates.