Airbus has announced it will end production of its flagship A380 superjumbo, potentially putting UK jobs at risk.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Airbus has announced it will end production of its flagship A380 superjumbo, potentially putting UK jobs at risk.

The firm said it had made the "painful" decision after struggling to sell the world's largest passenger jet and after Emirates chose to slash its A380 orderbook by around a quarter.

Due to the reduction and a lack of order backlog with other airlines, Airbus said it would end deliveries of the record-breaking plane in 2021 – just 14 years after it first entered commercial service.

Link.

[Sea Skimmer]

Stupid plane based on insane market forecasts with no basis in reality. Cool, but stupid. Everyone building it is probably out of a job because the engines aren't used by anything else and are basically obsolete (Rolls aren't meeting design specs as is, part of why Emirates is throwing in the towel even on older orders, the GP7200 is even worse), and Airbus already has plans and workers in place for expanding production of it's other types. Indeed it may be expanding production a bit much on the A320neo, the backlong on the plane is crazy but so is the plan to build IIRC 63 a month.

Airbus and Boeing once negotiated about joint production of a future VLA in the early 1990s. This ended with Boeing telling Airbus outright it should NOT build one and that Boeing would not do so independently. Boeing went on to make a mild redesign of the 747 they never expected to sell many of, Airbus launched the A380 alone... The 747-8 hasn't sold much, but its total R&D cost was comparable to what a new engine for the A380 would cost. Boeing considers it a success, just not a big money maker.

Airbus literally forecast the market for VLA aircraft 2000-2036 would be 1,700+, and that somehow 2/3rd would all server a global web of just 36 huge hub airports. Instead it looks like its more like about 400, mostly in roles as either freighters or jobs that could be done was well by twin jets.

They forecast that huge surges in global travel would force the hub system, without accepting the reality that this level of increase actually allows far more point to point routes to be justified. And ignored that people wanted more then 1 flight per day between cities. And that while the A380 improved use of runways, it did not improve the costs and sizes involved with actual aircraft terminals. Airbus though airlines would want a 1:1 replacement rate of the 747 production numbers, even though the number of operational 747s in the world had been dropping since before the preliminaries studies for the A380 were made, or the Boeing and McDonnell Douglas projects for 600 seat airliners cancelled.

But European political leaders wanted a big unifying projects and Airbus internally loved the idea of a project Boeing wouldn't actually compete with. But so many people told them this wouldn't work...

Operationally the A380 has proven impossible to profit on, or nearly so, Emirates seems to think they profit on it but many outsiders (and some pending European lawsuits) allege it gets illegal subsidies. Other airlines have in some cases outright said two twin jets back to back are actually cheaper to fly. The A380 doesn't have good fuel burn per seat mile and ton of cargo carried, it saves money primarily only by having one flight crew. But it requires more terminal staff because the staff have to be sized for 500+ people suddenly arriving and departing. And it has high landing fees cause it's huge and low operational flexibility, meaning it's just really hard to keep it full all the time, while not suddenly stranding 500 people from a maintenance issue (spare plane issue).

It's not like Boeing is all brilliant either, the 787 will never be profitable due to the immense R&D costs and it's looking like the 777x will struggle in the long term because it's too focused on the requirements of airlines in the Gulf like Emirates, while Airbuse's own A350 is probably more right sized in passengers and flight capability. 777x isn't as expensive as a clean sheet plane, but it's still very very expensive as a program. But these aircraft will all sell in large numbers at least. If nothing else it's reasonable to assume all existing 777s will be replaced by similar aircraft, it's just many of those replacements may be A350s and not 777x models, even with the A380 off the table which is a defacto boost to the 777x as the next largest plane in production (ignoring the horrific IL-96 option).

I suspect it was Airbus that actually initiated this BTW, many other observers do too, concerning the Emirates cancellation. Once the production rate was cut Airbus began loosing money on each A380, only a few ever got produced at any profit on the price of production. That meant Airbus was burning money to keep the plane alive, and the recent Emirates 'order' that imploded was only to extend the window in which they burned money to keep it alive, hoping congestion would pickup. A terrible strategy given the Airbus refusal to invest 5 billion dollars in improving the in flight economy of the plane with new engines and wing upgrades (nobody was interested even in principle in this except Emirates).

Once it was clear nobody else was going to pick up this plane, and that Emirates was insisting on better performance guarantee from the existing plane in hot weather it was a wise move of Enders to kill the project now. He's retiring shortly and it leaves the Airbus future wide open to his successor. Emirates is probably relieved in a way. They are in big shit if they can't sell the A380s they own as they age out of front rank service, and while this makes those planes worth even less, it also lets them save some face, and at least not make that situation worse.

[madd0ct0r]

Its a bit of a blow for my area - not many skilled jobs around and the welsh government had hopes of the wings being made here transforming into a bigger sector.

Got any more info on

Airbus already has plans and workers in place for expanding production of it's other types. Indeed it may be expanding production a bit much on the A320neo, the backlong on the plane is crazy but so is the plan to build IIRC 63 a month.
[\quote]

[GrosseAdmiralFox]

Stupid plane based on insane market forecasts with no basis in reality. Cool, but stupid. Everyone building it is probably out of a job because the engines aren't used by anything else and are basically obsolete (Rolls aren't meeting design specs as is, part of why Emirates is throwing in the towel even on older orders, the GP7200 is even worse), and Airbus already has plans and workers in place for expanding production of it's other types. Indeed it may be expanding production a bit much on the A320neo, the backlong on the plane is crazy but so is the plan to build IIRC 63 a month.

Airbus and Boeing once negotiated about joint production of a future VLA in the early 1990s. This ended with Boeing telling Airbus outright it should NOT build one and that Boeing would not do so independently. Boeing went on to make a mild redesign of the 747 they never expected to sell many of, Airbus launched the A380 alone... The 747-8 hasn't sold much, but its total R&D cost was comparable to what a new engine for the A380 would cost. Boeing considers it a success, just not a big money maker.

Airbus literally forecast the market for VLA aircraft 2000-2036 would be 1,700+, and that somehow 2/3rd would all server a global web of just 36 huge hub airports. Instead it looks like its more like about 400, mostly in roles as either freighters or jobs that could be done was well by twin jets.

They forecast that huge surges in global travel would force the hub system, without accepting the reality that this level of increase actually allows far more point to point routes to be justified. And ignored that people wanted more then 1 flight per day between cities. And that while the A380 improved use of runways, it did not improve the costs and sizes involved with actual aircraft terminals. Airbus though airlines would want a 1:1 replacement rate of the 747 production numbers, even though the number of operational 747s in the world had been dropping since before the preliminaries studies for the A380 were made, or the Boeing and McDonnell Douglas projects for 600 seat airliners cancelled.

But European political leaders wanted a big unifying projects and Airbus internally loved the idea of a project Boeing wouldn't actually compete with. But so many people told them this wouldn't work...

Operationally the A380 has proven impossible to profit on, or nearly so, Emirates seems to think they profit on it but many outsiders (and some pending European lawsuits) allege it gets illegal subsidies. Other airlines have in some cases outright said two twin jets back to back are actually cheaper to fly. The A380 doesn't have good fuel burn per seat mile and ton of cargo carried, it saves money primarily only by having one flight crew. But it requires more terminal staff because the staff have to be sized for 500+ people suddenly arriving and departing. And it has high landing fees cause it's huge and low operational flexibility, meaning it's just really hard to keep it full all the time, while not suddenly stranding 500 people from a maintenance issue (spare plane issue).

It's not like Boeing is all brilliant either, the 787 will never be profitable due to the immense R&D costs and it's looking like the 777x will struggle in the long term because it's too focused on the requirements of airlines in the Gulf like Emirates, while Airbuse's own A350 is probably more right sized in passengers and flight capability. 777x isn't as expensive as a clean sheet plane, but it's still very very expensive as a program. But these aircraft will all sell in large numbers at least. If nothing else it's reasonable to assume all existing 777s will be replaced by similar aircraft, it's just many of those replacements may be A350s and not 777x models, even with the A380 off the table which is a defacto boost to the 777x as the next largest plane in production (ignoring the horrific IL-96 option).

I suspect it was Airbus that actually initiated this BTW, many other observers do too, concerning the Emirates cancellation. Once the production rate was cut Airbus began loosing money on each A380, only a few ever got produced at any profit on the price of production. That meant Airbus was burning money to keep the plane alive, and the recent Emirates 'order' that imploded was only to extend the window in which they burned money to keep it alive, hoping congestion would pickup. A terrible strategy given the Airbus refusal to invest 5 billion dollars in improving the in flight economy of the plane with new engines and wing upgrades (nobody was interested even in principle in this except Emirates).

Once it was clear nobody else was going to pick up this plane, and that Emirates was insisting on better performance guarantee from the existing plane in hot weather it was a wise move of Enders to kill the project now. He's retiring shortly and it leaves the Airbus future wide open to his successor. Emirates is probably relieved in a way. They are in big shit if they can't sell the A380s they own as they age out of front rank service, and while this makes those planes worth even less, it also lets them save some face, and at least not make that situation worse.

Yeah, and don't forget that humans are expensive to hire anymore... which means that if something isn't going to 'expectations' (most of them are pure and unadulterated fantasies these days), then people and production lines get the boot.

[Sea Skimmer]

Its a bit of a blow for my area - not many skilled jobs around and the welsh government had hopes of the wings being made here transforming into a bigger sector.

Apparently the plant is making wings for the A320 and A350 so it might survive as a site more easily then I thought, depending mainly Brexit terms, or quick negotiations of some kind of follow on deal after no deal exit. Airbus might be prepared to eat a WTO tariff on the wings for a short period, because shifting the work has it's own direct costs, but absolutely not long term. I believe the rate for aircraft stuff is pretty low by default, but it adds up on these scales of overall revenue. Plus the UK is ejecting itself from the political system that underpins Airbus in the first place, and on top of that Airbus is supposed to be transitioning to an investor led company, not a political pork barrel. The A380 was kinda supposed to be the last grasp of the old way of existing, though it realistically isn't.

Several plants make A350 and A320 wings for Airbus around the world, and Airbus specifically declined to invest more in Wales in the past because they could do it cheaper in Korea. So the long term of this plant is still pretty bad.

As for the A320 expansion, see this, it's been long coming
https://www.flightglobal.com/news/artic ... 63-455775/

Basically Airbus already has the people and stuff in place to make the air frames in large part, but it's been held back, actually so has the A350, by issues with certain subcontractors and the engine makers. The engine makers don't want to invest in higher outputs, and have struggled to meet even existing rates, because there own high end investments would almost certainly not pay off long term precisely because a huge glut of new narrow bodies are being built at unsustainable rates right now. Part of that is because of higher fuel prices speeding up replacement cycles of jets from before the 2000s, a lot of it is because the 2008-2012 recession period saw major drops in average airline orders yet also a quick rebound of oil prices.

So were in a sort of bubble right now of making up for that lost ground, and also replacing some planes that might have lasted longer in an era of cheaper fuel.

Because the biggest hold back is the engines made by outside firms the scope for Airbus to actually redeploy people off the A380 to other jobs is limited. Airbus is a big company, well over 100,000 people, but they've been slowly laying off workers on other projects for a while. A400M and A380 had major cuts in 2018 already. Airbus is mostly executed these cuts by not replacing workers who left the company, but that can only go so far, and that plan for the A380 is now umm, not on the most sound grounds. Producing 1 design at a higher rate will never employee as many people as 2 different programs will.

Given 2 more years of time I'm sure Airbus will try to redeploy A380 main assembly plant workers where it can, at expense of new hiring, but the need to actually keep making the A380 during that period when head count is still excessive for the actual building rate, makes this difficult to implement.

The A400M wing is also built in the UK BTW, but as a joint fixed price program with various European governments and about half the entire planned production run (more exports are seriously possible though with the C-17 gone from the table) already built it's probably pretty secure until the program is done. Airbus is already gonna loose a lot of money on this plane, I doubt tariff costs could exceed the cost of moving the wing plant. Also the A400M program involves direct contracts with the UK government, though the structuring of this left a lot open to Airbus and the UK portion of the order is almost finished so I'm not sure if that's a binding issue or not.

[Elfdart]

We heard about this at work two weeks ago. The word we got is that Airbus is going to focus on long-bodied A350s for the near future until the new wonder-engines are ready (if ever).

I used to wonder why airlines didn't use the extra space in these jumbo jets to allow for fewer passengers but fancier amenities like leg room, but one of the old timers rolled his eyes and informed me (patiently) that without steerage, airlines couldn't turn a profit. So I'm guessing more steerage flights in smaller planes is more doable financially than a behemoth -even one made up of business and 1st class passengers?

[Jub]

We heard about this at work two weeks ago. The word we got is that Airbus is going to focus on long-bodied A350s for the near future until the new wonder-engines are ready (if ever).

I used to wonder why airlines didn't use the extra space in these jumbo jets to allow for fewer passengers but fancier amenities like leg room, but one of the old timers rolled his eyes and informed me (patiently) that without steerage, airlines couldn't turn a profit. So I'm guessing more steerage flights in smaller planes is more doable financially than a behemoth -even one made up of business and 1st class passengers?

1) You won't fill a business and first class only plane every flight.
2) You often make more money off of the 6 schlubs taking up space in the economy-class than you do the 1 business-class person that would take up that same space.
3) First class is mostly dead, planes tend to run a mix of like 10-20 business class seats and the rest economy.

A full plane will nearly always beat a less than half-full plane for profit even if the half-full plane is paying more per seat.

[Elfdart]

I get that part of it, I but had thought that bigger seats/more leg room would entice customers willing to pay more AND cause less surliness from passengers -enough to make up for having somewhat fewer passengers. I watched an old episode of The Twilight Zone and the size of the seats in the plane was as much of an artifact of days of yore as seeing half the passengers smoking during the flight.

[TimothyC]

I get that part of it, I but had thought that bigger seats/more leg room would entice customers willing to pay more AND cause less surliness from passengers -enough to make up for having somewhat fewer passengers.

Nope. In the US at least, the majority of non-business passengers focus mainly on top line price, and ignore things like seat size, layover times, and ancillary fees/costs. I don't have a reference, but I recall seeing something to the effect of the average passenger would take a six hour layover if it meant a lower price on their ticket. Personally, I wouldn't do that, but a lot of people would. Furthermore, the airlines have found that people who want more space are willing to pay for it by going for Premium Economy and Business Class seats - and people do pay. For example, the American Airlines A321 Transcontinental configuration is 10 first class, 20 business, 36 economy plus (35 inch pitch vs 31 for economy) and 36 economy seats. Jetblue offers a 4/12/41/104 or 0/0/42/158 on the same aircraft.

[Jub]

It's anecdotal but when I was traveling from Kelowna to Melbourne, I was on an extreme budget. I could have done with fewer layovers, and an overall shorter trip but my travel plan ending up looking like this:

Kelowna, YLW ----> Vancouver, YVR
4 -hour layover
Vancouver, YVR -----> LA, LAX
7-hour layover
LA, LAX ----> Nadi, NAN
11-hour layover
Nadi, NAN ----> Melbourne, MEL

It only saved like $300 to take this insane route and deal with 22 hours of layovers in a single trip but I wouldn't have made it any other way.

My trip back was even more insane because I went out to visit my Uncle in Perth, so picture my travel plan but with an additional 6-hours in Melbourne. I also took a bus back to Kelowna from Vancouver with a longer layover waiting for the bus than I would have for a flight. So... Over two days in transit to get home. All to save a few bucks.

[Elfdart]

I usually fly stand-by, but thanks to my airport ID badge, no matter where I'm assigned I often end up in the seat next to the emergency exit because for some strange reason, United, Delta and American keep booking grannies and others who obviously can't open the door to those seats, so the crew asks me to swap. When I travel alone, I have all the foot room I want -which is handy since I wear size 16 shoes.

[Starglider]

Of late I find myself primarily checking SDN to see if Sea Skimmer has posted something, his contributions are consistently the most entertaining & informative.

Nope. In the US at least, the majority of non-business passengers focus mainly on top line price, and ignore things like seat size, layover times, and ancillary fees/costs.

However Americans are willing to pay through the nose for oversized trucks with ridiculous overpriced trim packages, including rip-off financing and leasing options, which I cannot imagine actually improve the driver experience significantly vs a typical mid-market compact car (in fact given that most truck drivers don't tow and don't go off road they probably have a worse driving experience). This is of course because vehicles are a very visible status symbol and lifestyle statement, whereas flying business class vs coach isn't. If any of the various startups manage to get quadcopter electic air taxis working, I expect they will find a ready American market, as they allow for an ostentatious arrival that can impress friends & onlookers.

[Jub]

However Americans are willing to pay through the nose for oversized trucks with ridiculous overpriced trim packages, including rip-off financing and leasing options, which I cannot imagine actually improve the driver experience significantly vs a typical mid-market compact car (in fact given that most truck drivers don't tow and don't go off road they probably have a worse driving experience). This is of course because vehicles are a very visible status symbol and lifestyle statement, whereas flying business class vs coach isn't. If any of the various startups manage to get quadcopter electic air taxis working, I expect they will find a ready American market, as they allow for an ostentatious arrival that can impress friends & onlookers.

The other difference is one experience is transitory, you fly to a place and back a that's that. With a vehicle or a house, or whatever other items that may be, you get whatever value to ascribe to it for a significantly longer period of time. The US and Canada are also, outside of major cities, much more vehicle friendly than many parts of Europe so a larger vehicle isn't as much worse here as it would be in many parts of Europe.

[Elheru Aran]

Re the ticket cost discussion:

Poking around on Orbitz(I'm sure there are better sites out there, but it's pretty typical AFAIK), setting a date in early March because you have to pick a date:

One way Atlanta --> NYC: a range from $61 (!!! but last minute tickets apparently, on Frontier, a notably discount airline with high baggage fees) all the way up to $459 (!!!). These are economy seats; I checked. No, paying $500 for an economy seat doesn't make sense, but it is what it is. Business tickets... actually don't cost much more. That's interesting. First class does jump significantly to just under $300 for starters.

ATL-->NYC is a pretty common route though one would think, both are big air-travel hubs, so it makes sense that travel between the two would be pretty cheap. Lots of small commercial planes that are basically economy from nose to ass. Let's look at something perhaps a little different... say Junior in Atlanta wants to visit his sick gran in Montana but he's got to come home later that week...

ATL--> Billings round trip: starts at $578.51, coach! This is where a bit more planning ahead comes into play and price-shopping. But I don't know that you're going to get much less than that without buying either really well in advance or getting a great deal somehow.

How about an international flight?

ATL--> Paris? One way starts at $916 for economy. Business is... $6,877.11! First class? $9,870.

Based upon extremely limited data because I'm not going to bother digging: Hypothesis is that flying common routes between large hubs will be cheaper, so people might be more inclined to spend a little extra there for legroom. However, going internationally or to out-of-the-way airports is going to run up the price significantly, and that's before checking luggage. Upgrading seats is an absolutely staggering premium.

Thus: A380 probably cost enough that even filling it up nose-to-ass with economy seats wouldn't have really offset the cost, and flying two smaller planes with the same number of tickets would have been more economical. Making the entire plane mostly business-level seats might have worked, but you aren't going to get enough fliers paying the premium for that kind of legroom to fill up the plane.

[Alferd Packer]

I think what kills the jumbo jets, in general, is that they are now only economical on high-demand, long-haul routes to really congested airports. Say, JFK to Beijing, or Heathrow to Singapore--where you have the plane both full and in the air for 14+ hours at a stretch. More time in the air means means you get more for your maintenance cycle on the ground, and more passengers offsets the landing fees the airports charge (a 500-seat plane costs about the same to land as a 200 seat plane). Problem is, I don't know how many of those routes exist anymore, especially with airplane designs pushing ETOPS further and further, making the four-engined jets go the way of the three-engined ones. If one can forgo the complexity and cost of a four-engined jumbo jet for a twin-engined jet with the same range, it probably makes sense in most cases.

[Jub]

Jumbos will also make sense if we ever get a viable supersonic airliner in the future.

[K. A. Pital]

Gigantic plane fails? Capitalists are so smart!

Gigantic tanker is useless and gets scrapped 4 years after being built? Capitalists are so smart!

Surely it was not a total waste of working time, engineering effort - oh wait it totally was.

Supersonic airliners? Maybe instead make more accessible travel options, restore the night train network, and stop burning fossil fuels in the atmosphere in such extreme amounts?

But no. Stupid me. Bring on the Concorde Mk 2.

[Patroklos]

Jumbos will also make sense if we ever get a viable supersonic airliner in the future.

This is not true regarding supersonic aircraft. When it comes to aircraft speed and the sound barrier, due to the specifics of air resistance and turbulence in a significant range before and after it, it makes little sense to either approach it without breaking and only makes sense to break it if you do so by a significant amount.

And all of this is for business traveler prices and habits, which as airlines found with the A380 do not exist in enough numbers to justify large fleets of jumbos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1QEj09Pe6k&t=613s

These explain how the class and passenger behavior impact plane configuration and design.

[Jub]

Jumbos will also make sense if we ever get a viable supersonic airliner in the future.

This is not true regarding supersonic aircraft. When it comes to aircraft speed and the sound barrier, due to the specifics of air resistance and turbulence in a significant range before and after it, it makes little sense to either approach it without breaking and only makes sense to break it if you do so by a significant amount.

And all of this is for business traveler prices and habits, which as airlines found with the A380 do not exist in enough numbers to justify large fleets of jumbos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1QEj09Pe6k&t=613s

These explain how the class and passenger behavior impact plane configuration and design.

I know all of that, demographics was part of what killed the Concorde even if operating costs and very limited routes were arguably a larger factor. Any modern supersonic airliner will likely have to fall into one of two categories, big, cheap and efficient or small, under 2 hour Atlantic crossings and expensive as hell. I'd bet on the small one happening first as some sort of suborbital semi-spaceplane thing but if jumbos are going to make a comeback an efficient super-cruising design could make a lot of sense.

If we don't get that kind of supersonic plane, I don't see larger fleets of jumbos ever making a comeback. The only other exception would be in the switch to non-fossil fuel flights where perhaps a larger plane cares less about battery weights than smaller ones and where you may need 4-engine designs to counteract poor engine power. I'm not convinced that will be the case, but it's another case where I could see a period of large widebody jets coming back into service in large numbers.

[The_Saint]

Bring on the airships...

[K. A. Pital]

“Non-fossil fuel flights”. Sorry...

[Starglider]

Gigantic plane fails? Capitalists are so smart!

I see the lies are still flowing as fast and transparent as a mountain stream, sadly the stream is actually runoff from Soviet-era mine tailings contaminated with fatal levels of bismuth. As noted earlier in the thread the actual capitalists, i.e. Boeing, realised that the quadjet era was coming to an end and ramped down their investment accordingly. This malinvestment was politically motivated and would never have happened without the substantial government owernship, interference and subsidy of EADS; something the UK was expressly objecting to as early as 2003.

[TimothyC]

“Non-fossil fuel flights”. Sorry...

If there was a decision to support LH2 powered aircraft, there is no reason why they would not work - low level study work started in the 1980s (There was a proposal to build a cargo version the L-1011 with hydrogen tanks funded by The Saudis and West Germany in conjunction with the US), and Boeing has within the last decade built small scale planes using hydrogen fuel cells, it is not unreasonable to think that in the 2040+ timeframe, there could be a serious move away from hydrocarbon fueled aviation. It's not likely because even at best LH2 doesn't offer the volumetric energy density that hydrocarbons offer, but it is possible with a concerted effort.

[K. A. Pital]

As noted earlier in the thread the actual capitalists, i.e. Boeing, realised that the quadjet era was coming to an end and ramped down their investment accordingly. This malinvestment was politically motivated and would never have happened without the substantial government owernship, interference and subsidy of EADS; something the UK was expressly objecting to as early as 2003.

Hey look, “No True Capitalist”! Holy Scotsman! The whine is strong with this one.

If there was a decision to support LH2 powered aircraft

Key word here? “If”. Not happened and not happening...

[madd0ct0r]

Jumbos will also make sense if we ever get a viable supersonic airliner in the future.

This is not true regarding supersonic aircraft. When it comes to aircraft speed and the sound barrier, due to the specifics of air resistance and turbulence in a significant range before and after it, it makes little sense to either approach it without breaking and only makes sense to break it if you do so by a significant amount.

And all of this is for business traveler prices and habits, which as airlines found with the A380 do not exist in enough numbers to justify large fleets of jumbos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1QEj09Pe6k&t=613s

These explain how the class and passenger behavior impact plane configuration and design.

I know all of that, demographics was part of what killed the Concorde even if operating costs and very limited routes were arguably a larger factor. Any modern supersonic airliner will likely have to fall into one of two categories, big, cheap and efficient or small, under 2 hour Atlantic crossings and expensive as hell. I'd bet on the small one happening first as some sort of suborbital semi-spaceplane thing but if jumbos are going to make a comeback an efficient super-cruising design could make a lot of sense.

If we don't get that kind of supersonic plane, I don't see larger fleets of jumbos ever making a comeback. The only other exception would be in the switch to non-fossil fuel flights where perhaps a larger plane cares less about battery weights than smaller ones and where you may need 4-engine designs to counteract poor engine power. I'm not convinced that will be the case, but it's another case where I could see a period of large widebody jets coming back into service in large numbers.

If most people will accept a six hour layover to save cash, they will accept 8hrs over 2 by the same logic. The market for superfast transport is not large.