"Most of the buyers are not planning to use the A380 for more than 550 passengers. They'll have more room, more comfort than in a B747. Their goal is to make passengers forget they're flying. "

If they use fewer passengers with more luxury, then they are going to have to chanrge differently per plane, and not per class, which is NOT a model that has worked well before. non-luxury seeking customers will find the cheaper flight on a smaller jet, and Luxury customers will not care as long as whatever they sit in, they sit up front. Beyond that, there would be creating an interoperable software system that had a whole other category in it ('better plane' price), where the rest of the industry doesn't. Not as easy and not as cheap as it sounds.

In a way, its question begging. Your assuming that everyone wants the A380 experience and then basing your marketing strategy around it, instead of marketing it in a way that fits what the consumer wants, or moving the consumer with incentives.

" And there's less fuel spent per passenger"

Not if you cut the number of passengers to add luxury. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

"And I've seen lately how many planes there are at any time in the sky and it's much much more than several years ago. The sky can be loaded with contrails. If there are fewer planes, and thus bigger ones, that would be better for everybody."

The SKY is not crowded, ROUTES and HUBS are. The domestic airlines that are surviving seem to be departing from the super-hub notion, and cheaper-to-run small planes make more sense in this case. If this model works out in a more general sense (and there is no reason to think it won't), then jumbos in general are goners.

There is a lot of wishful thinking on both sides. Despite the subsidy sucking that Boeing has been guilty of, Airbus is a political tool for economic warfare against the US whose subsidy sucking is completely unparalleled, and I hope its butt gets stomped.

If the A380 flops hard, it will demonstrate that airbus can only improve upon other peoples innovations, and is basically a European aerospace Department Of Transportation, if the A380 succeeds (even if it is just because of political support and pressure that it is bought in sufficient numbers), it will (along with India and China) demonstrate that state-managed economic ventures and/or economic sectors may not be the poison that we have always assumed they are.

Not that Boeing has been able to act with the technical and managerial brilliance it has exhibited in previous decades...

Davin L.