DUBAI - After insisting for 15 years that the superjumbo is the future, Emirates airline has been forced by the demise of the A380 to embrace smaller wide-body jets, resulting in a flurry of maneuvers between planemakers at this week’s Dubai Airshow.
The double-decker A380 superjumbo and the big twin-engined Boeing 777, plus mid-sized 787s and A350s, were all spread out in front of VIP chalets - the queens, bishops and knights in a game of industry chess being played out across the globe.Periodically, the industry designs smaller planes that match both the range and efficiency of larger ones, allowing smaller pieces on the industry chess board to topple larger ones.
Emirates insists the superhub model it pioneered - which takes advantage of Dubai’s location to capture global traffic using large aircraft - remains intact despite the new twist. But it ensured its own A350 picked up the slack and won a ticket to any future contests to replace A380s still in service.
Why no photo? It’s nothing interesting