Passenger aircraft design is all about being as efficient as possible in order to save fuel. And the two big players in the market, Boeing and Airbus, have taken very different approaches to the problem. Boeing has kept its planes around the same sizes as its existing fleet, but redesigned them to be more fuel efficient. Airbus on the other hand has gone big, so big in fact that it produced the world’s largest passenger plane, the A380. The A380 has 478 square meters of usable cabin space, making it 40 percent larger than the next largest passenger plane, the Boeing 747-8. That means it is capable of carrying up to 853 passengers with a range of 9,800 miles. It’s truly massive, and that ultimately is what has proved problematic.Such a large aircraft is limited in the destinations it can fly to because most airports can’t service it. The A380 requires longer runways, very large hangars for maintenance, and terminals able to allow passengers to enter and exit the aircraft easily. In most cases it has meant modifications are required, which takes time and in some cases isn’t possible.
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