Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Mere Billionaires Need Not Apply

They cannot join those who have a private Airbus A-380.


$320 million for the airplane and the estimate of $50-150 million for the interior is probably low. What that would buy you is an airplane that has an interior larger than that of some McMansions and cannot land at most of the airports in the world, which are not roomy enough for a A-380. It's not merely a matter of the weight of the airplane, the An-225 is heavier


but the An-225 has a lot more wheels.


The back four trucks of the An-225's main gear are steerable, so the airplane can make tight turns without scrubbing all of the rubber from the tires, but I digress.

Some reports state that the per-tire load of the A-380 was designed to be less than that of a 747. The real issues are the wingspan and the distance between the outboard engines.

Wingspan issues mean that at some airports, if the A-380 was taxiing on a taxiway, its wingtips would smash into parked airplanes and those on adjoining taxiways. Distance between engines means that the runways have to be 200' wide or wider if the engines are not to be overhanging the edges of the runway. Having engines hanging out over the grass increases the chances of injesting something and "fodding up" an engine of that size is not a cheap event. These issues also are present for the An-225, but there is only one of those.

The one problem that the private A-380 doesn't have that its airline brethren have is the need to fit in at terminal gates at the airport.

None of which addresses the point of flying in an "airbus," which sounds as glamorous as a CTA bus.

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