Emirates

It's been said on another aviation forum that Emirates has cancelled its Stansted and Gatwick operations until next November and all its London operations will be out of Heathrow until then.
 
Emirates Summer 2022 UK frequency’s:
London Heathrow- 6 daily flights
Manchester- 2 daily flights
Birmingham-11 weekly flights
Glasgow- 1 daily flight
London Gatwick- 1 daily flight
London STN- 1 daily flight
Newcastle- 5 weekly flights

SeanM on Twitter
 
This video deals with an incident at Dubai Airport less than two weeks ago. It involved an Emirates B777 taking off on a 14-hour flight to Washington, USA. Because of the length of the flight there were four pilots on board, one crew to fly the take-off and a relief crew to take over later in the flight.

The aircraft continued past its normal take-off speed without lifting off and carried on to the end of the runway. It was only then by which time the 777 was travelling about half as fast again as its normal take-off speed that the crew lifted off. They then overflew a densely-populated Dubai suburb at no more than 75 feet above the buildings. Only when they reached the coast shortly afterwards did they begin to climb and carried on to Washington where the aircraft landed safely.

The video says the incident raises serious questions regarding pilots' reliance on automation and that a catastrophic crash was narrowly avoided. It also questions the airline's training where pilots are said to be told to use the highest mode of automation available at almost every portion of a flight.

There has been an ongoing discussion on another aviation website about this incident with a number of professional pilots expressing concern. Automation dependency is a recognised issue.

I have a particular interest because between 2010 and the beginning of the pandemic my wife and I flew each year with Emirates between the UK and Australia via Dubai. In the early years the aircraft were B777-300ER but A380s then took over. We hope to resume these trips at some point.

I have no expertise in the matter of flying aircraft so cannot venture an opinion but, from comments of professional pilots (alluded to in the video), there might well be some cause for concern.

A full look at the eleven-minute video will give a better a better feel of the incident than my summary. Any enquiry will no doubt take a while to carry out.

 
not to be too pedantic, but they did hand fly the aircraft, all takeoffs are hand flown. only the autothrottle would have been engaged for takeoff, and that doesn't seem to have played any part in what happened.

the issue appears (and this is obviously rumour atm) to be how the aircraft was set up and potentially the guidance provided by the flight directors - and no airline is going to start doing takeoffs without flight directors.
 

Emirates Wants Airbus To Design A New Kind Of A380​

Emirates President Tim Clark is one of the brightest and most reasonable guys in the airline industry. When he talks, it’s worth listening. Along those lines, he has just made some interesting comments about the future of “superjumbo” air travel.

Why the Airbus A380 was such a failure​

Back in the 2000s, many believed that the Airbus A380 represented the future of air travel. As the demand for global air travel continues to increase, and as airports are increasingly capacity constrained, higher capacity jets are needed. Unfortunately that’s not how things have played out.

A380 production has already ended due to lack of demand — just over 250 of the planes were ever produced, and Emirates purchased around half of those. Emirates executives think the A380 is a brilliant aircraft, while most other A380 customers regret having purchased the jet.

The challenge for the A380 has been that we’ve seen Airbus and Boeing introduce smaller, long range, and fuel efficient jets, including the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787. These airplanes are great, as they allow airlines to efficiently operate point-to-point long haul routes that may not have previously been economical.

So why has Emirates had such success with the A380, while virtually all other airlines haven’t?

  • Economies of scale are required to make the A380 work; you need a massive hub & spoke network to fill A380s, and having just a dozen A380s doesn’t really accomplish that
  • You need access to a lot of capital, and being owned by an oil rich country certainly helps with that
  • CEOs of publicly traded airlines are just conservative by nature; they generally won’t get blamed for things they don’t spend money on, while they will get blamed for things that they do spend money on

Tim Clark’s argument for a new A380 variant​

Emirates took delivery of its last Airbus A380 in September 2021. Before A380 production stopped, Emirates President Tim Clark was vocal about asking Airbus to keep the A380 alive. We haven’t heard much from him about the jet since then… until now.


CNN Travel has an interview with Clark, where he’s once again talking about the long term need for an A380 equivalent, and how the plane could be even more efficient. The basis of his argument is that the demand for global air travel grew by around 4.5% per year pre-pandemic, and we’ll probably continue to see that level of growth in the future.

Here’s what Clark views as the problem with there not being any superjumbo planes in the pipeline:

  • “The notion that the A380 was a spent force was always a little bit of a difficult one for us to swallow.”
  • “I was chuckling to myself, thinking ‘wait and see.’ We started flying the A380 into Heathrow six times a day in October of last year, and we haven’t had a [free] seat on any of them since.”
  • “The math tells you that you need a big unit, much bigger than we’re getting at the moment. The biggest one will be the 777-9, whenever that comes to market, which in our configuration [will seat] 364 people against 484 on the A380s with our new premium economy. And it was 519 before, so you get where I’m coming from.”
  • “Even with multiple 787s and A350s all busy flying around the world, I still don’t get how you will pick up that growth curve. Supply will be suppressed, demand will continue to grow, and when that happens prices rise, it’s inevitable.
  • “If you take the A380s out of the frame by the mid-2030s, how are you going to make it work? Do we see massive upgrades of airfields or new airfields? At Heathrow, they can’t even agree on the third runway. Schiphol has just reduced the number of landings and takeoffs that they will allow. So, one wonders, how would this demand be accommodated?”
So, what’s the solution, according to Clark?

  • “Is it possible to redesign a new A380? Yes. Is it possible to lighten the aircraft? Yes. When they brought this aircraft to market, composites weren’t really [widespread]. Imagine a composite wing and a predominantly composite fuselage. Imagine engines that are giving you a 20 to 25% improvement compared to what you get today.”
  • “We’re trying to get everybody working on the big fans for the bigger aircraft as well. If you can get them to do what I think they could do in terms of fuel efficiency and power, then you have the makings of an airplane that would match or beat the economics of the [twin-engine aircraft] that we see today, by quite a long way.”
Clark is a realist, however, and acknowledges that this likely won’t be happening anytime soon:

  • “Do I think that airlines will step up and sign up to this project? Doubtful at this stage.”
  • “On the one hand I’m very keen to take a good hard look at this, on the other I’m not optimistic that the stakeholders in the ecosystem are up for it.”
  • “The airline industry is, rightly so, populated with people who are conservative in nature, because they’ve lost their shirts — this has been a seriously bad time for air travel. But now, things are starting to look a lot better, demand is back. So they have the ability to think hard about the future. Whether they’ve got the appetite for it, I don’t know. I know we have it.”
Click to expand...
Link

Interesting comments by Sir Tim, Emirates have built their brand around the A380, and would love to see A380Neos built, let's see if Airbus have the appetite.

​

 
XEROX said:

Emirates Wants Airbus To Design A New Kind Of A380​

Emirates President Tim Clark is one of the brightest and most reasonable guys in the airline industry. When he talks, it’s worth listening. Along those lines, he has just made some interesting comments about the future of “superjumbo” air travel.


Link

Interesting comments by Sir Tim, Emirates have built their brand around the A380, and would love to see A380Neos built, let's see if Airbus have the appetite.

​

Click to expand...

Unless existing airframes can be modified, I suspect Emirates will be the only airlines interested.

Would be far more lucrative for Airbus to focus on making a NEO version of the A350 with an additional stretched version larger than the -1000 to compete with the 777X.
 
Coathanger16 said:
Unless existing airframes can be modified, I suspect Emirates will be the only airlines interested.

Would be far more lucrative for Airbus to focus on making a NEO version of the A350 with an additional stretched version larger than the -1000 to compete with the 777X.
Click to expand...

That's an intresting take on how airframes can be modified, I'm guessing new engines too. But surely Airbus would have the A380Neo plans already drawn up even though mothballed. Whatever happens, intresting to see how Airbus responds, but the A380 is so iconic to Emirates as a strong brand.
 
XEROX said:
That's an intresting take on how airframes can be modified, I'm guessing new engines too. But surely Airbus would have the A380Neo plans already drawn up even though mothballed. Whatever happens, intresting to see how Airbus responds, but the A380 is so iconic to Emirates as a strong brand.
Click to expand...

Airbus kind of did a A380NEO before - the A380 Plus - it had split winglets but not new engines:

www.airbus.com

Airbus presents the A380plus

www.airbus.com www.airbus.com

Supposedly a 13% cost reduction per seat vs. the original A380, yet no airline ordered it.

Consider that the A380, B777X and B747-8 have less orders combined than either the A350 or B787, and it's clear that the market for very large wide bodies just isn't big enough to warrant an entire aircraft family.

I suspect if Airbus stretched the A350-1000 and Boeing stretched the B777-9, then within 5 years of them being available, besides maybe Emirate, we'd see very few if any A380's flying.
 
Coathanger16 said:
www.businesstraveller.com

Emirates debuts new livery, returns to Hong Kong direct – Business Traveller

New livery will first fly on EK51, an Airbus A380 service, from Dubai to Munich tomorrow.
www.businesstraveller.com www.businesstraveller.com

https://twitter.com/x/status/1636015588060594176

I'm not sure myself. Will have to wait until I see it in person.
Click to expand...
Hmmm, I'm not sure either. I'm not even sure that I like it (almost makes me fell seasick). Is it someone playing around with Photoshop? If it was a couple of weeks later, I would think it was an April fools joke.
 
A downgrade in my opinion. The strength of the current livery, and what makes it so visually striking, is its simplicity. With this new one it‘s hard to focus on the tail as it makes my eyes hurt!
 
Interesting article published in Business Traveller with regard to Emirates reporting surge in demand in bookings particularly through London and Glasgow. The article also mentions a 15 fold increase in demand from UK to Hong Kong, year on year as well as other routes. While no specific mention of BHX, its a strong picture emerging for the airline which hopefully gets reflected from Birmingham too

www.businesstraveller.com

London and Glasgow set to be Emirates’ most popular UK inbound gateways in 2024 – Business Traveller

The Gulf carrier said forward booking data pointed to “a surge” in UK inbound and outbound tourism over the next 12…
www.businesstraveller.com www.businesstraveller.com
 
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