747 versus A380

For about fifteen years these were the two largest airliners in service, and they were pitched directly against each other. Both are now out of production, and they lost to the same thing.

Side by side

	Boeing 747-8I	Airbus A380-800
Length	250 ft 2 in (76.25 m)	238 ft 7 in (72.72 m)
Wingspan	224 ft 5 in (68.40 m)	261 ft 8 in (79.75 m)
Height	63 ft 6 in (19.35 m)	79 ft (24.09 m)
Max takeoff weight	987,000 lb (447.7 t)	1,268,000 lb (575 t)
Passengers, 3-class	467	525
Maximum passengers	605	853
Range	7,730 nmi	8,000 nmi
Cruise	Mach 0.855	Mach 0.85
Engines	4 × GEnx-2B67	4 × Trent 900 or GP7000
Built	155	254

The A380 wins on nearly every measure of size. The 747-8 is longer, marginally faster, and — importantly — smaller in the two dimensions airports care about.

The airport argument

This is where the 747-8 had a real case, and it is easy to miss.

The A380 is a full double-deck aircraft at 79.75 m span and 24 m tall. Accepting it meant airports rebuilding stands, widening taxiways, and installing second-level jetways. That is capital expenditure by somebody other than the airline, and it limited where the aircraft could go.

The 747-8 was deliberately designed to the same height as a 747-400 and to fit existing 747 gates. An airline could introduce it without a single airport spending anything.

Boeing pushed the operating comparison hard too: the Intercontinental was claimed to be about 10 percent lighter per seat, with trip costs roughly 20 percent lower and seat-mile costs about 5 percent lower than the A380’s.

Where the A380 won

Sheer capacity, and passenger affection. On slot-constrained routes — Heathrow to Dubai, Sydney, Los Angeles — an airline that cannot get more slots can still carry more people by flying a bigger aeroplane, and 853 seats is a lot of people. Emirates built a large part of its network on exactly that logic and took more A380s than anyone.

Passengers liked it, which is not nothing. The cabin is quiet and the aircraft is smooth.

Why both lost

Neither was beaten by the other. Both were beaten by twin-engined aircraft.

The 777-300ER, then the 787 and A350, could fly the same long-haul routes on two engines instead of four, with better fuel burn and — decisively — without needing 400 to 500 seats filled to make money. Airlines moved from hub-and-spoke to point-to-point: more frequencies, smaller aircraft, direct routes that bypass hubs entirely.

That trend was already running when both aircraft launched. Airbus put it plainly when it ended the A380: if you have a product nobody wants, or that you can only sell below cost, you stop making it.

A380 production ended in 2021 after 254 aircraft. The 747 followed in January 2023 after 1,574.

The asymmetry at the end

One difference matters more than any specification: the 747 had a freighter and the A380 never did.

The 747-8F has a nose door and a main deck designed for cargo, because the 747 was designed as a freighter from the beginning. It outsold the passenger version more than two to one and kept the line running for a decade after airline orders stopped.

The A380’s double-deck layout makes a freighter version very hard — the upper deck floor is heavy, and loading two decks is awkward. A freighter was studied and abandoned.

So although both programmes ended, they ended differently. 107 of the 155 747-8s built were freighters, most of them young, and they will be working into the 2040s.

Related

• Specifications — every 747 variant compared
• The 747-8
• Airlines that flew the 747