1st in an upcoming What if…? Series. Would the A340s have stayed until now?
Most likely if the big three had chosen the A340 it would of been already phased out in favor of the more economical 777.
There’d have been no motivation to build the 748.
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I don’t think the 346 came out before the 777, If it had, There may have been incentive…
Also remember AA is the same airline that baited Lockheed into building a widebody only to switch their allegiance to Douglas’s DC-10. Look where that got them with several incidents with the cargo hatches.
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Those carriers were loyal to American manafacturers until recently so no ch ace of that happening, it’s better to not rely on Boeing as I’m sure they can get better deals as they want to win over the airline for the deal
As I recall it, the A340 at this point has incredibly poor resale value to the point where the replacing a pair of engines would eclipse the cost of actually acquiring the plane itself.
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United would not have done it. Probably not american. Delta might have.
Yeah it wasn’t that successful the B777 was far more popular and efficient but regardless most American carriers would to have got any Airbus aircraft back then mainly for American pride and for some other reasons which I’m sure weren’t the best idea for them but now everything has changed and they all have Airbus aircraft and Delta are ordering quite a few A330 aircraft for long haul which is nice to see
Airbus probably would upgrade the A340 to be more efficient if any major airline like AA bought them.
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And the one which had an engine fall off
I highly doubt that.
The A340-300/200 uses that V2500 the same that would be found on the A320, so I highly doubt it would be that expensive.
It’s a different story for the 340-500/600 though
They would have retired them in favor of 77Ws
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Yeah I meant the larger variants.
It’s funny, the A340-600 was the most economical ULH aircraft in the world, airlines loved the options the A346 opened up in terms of new, long routes. But then the 77W came along, it was meant to be efficient at shorter routes, but then the GE90-115Bs turned out to exceed expectations by a big margin. At the end of the day, the 77W did everything the A346 did for a lower cost. So every airline flocked to the 77W, whatever A346s airlines had left were left in the dust as fuel costs skyrocketed in 2007.
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That’s probably why the A346s are struggling.
I can actually see Delta and Ameican having the a340, only because they have a330s.
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Yeah, so do I lol.