However, Airbus claims that the A380 is the most efficient jet in the world.It does not make much sense to compare the two jets in fuel burn and seat-mile cost. It is also about 50% heavier than the 747 even when empty. It might be smaller in terms of passenger capacity, but in a world where airlines want smaller aircraft that fly point to point, is that $45 million extra really worth it? In fact, even though Airbus had plans to produce a freighter version of the “superjumbo” as well, those plans never came to fruition.If you are interested in the history of the A380, make sure to check out Now, let’s take at some of the two type’s characteristic features.
The biggest difference between the two is size as the A380 is certainly much bigger than the 747. Speaking of technical dimension, the A380 has about 73 meters overall length and Boeing 747 has about 71 meters long. Some aircraft might provide a better customer experience when it comes to quieter engines and better cabins. We will look at the lifetime of both aircraft.The Boeing 747 is actually cheaper to buy and cheaper to operate. Be in the know.We use ads to keep our content free.
The shortest variant of Boeing 747, the 747SP is 56.3 meters long while the other than the latest 747-8 are 70.66 meters long.
Additionally, we do have to admit that a cargo version of the Boeing 747 exists, and it is quite popular. I have yet to meet an aviation enthusiast that doesn’t like In this article, I decided to look at how the two double-deckers compare to each other in a variety of aspects ranging from their history, looks, size, and capacity, all the way to their price and commercial success.Having first flown in 1969 and entered into commercial operation on January 22, 1970, with Pan American World Airways, the Boeing 747 also known as the “Queen of the Skies” has been around for quite some time.Since then, the original 747-100 was followed by several variants including the commercially most successful 747-400 and the latest 747-8. This amount is almost $300,000 per extra passenger, which will need to be made up over the lifetime of the jet.Granted, if the A380 had been popular enough to reach higher production capacity, the price might have fallen. Looking at cargo capacity, the Boeing 747 actually has more capacity on board despite having less powerful engines and less thrust.Airbus has leaned hard into serving passengers and let Boeing slip ahead for this category. Modern aircraft such as the Boeing 777x and the Airbus A350 almost match capacity but with massive improvements in design, cost, and fuel efficiency.Altogether, the legacy of the 747 speaks for itself. For example, the 747SP had a range of 5,830 miles and the 747-200 of 6,560 miles.That, though, is of course caused by the fact that they’re decades older.The actual capacity varies from airline to airline depending on the number of classes, types of seats used, seat pitch, and so on. Additionally, we will assume that both are just as easy to fly as each other.No matter how airlines configure their cabins, the Airbus A380 pushes the 747 right out the gate with passenger capacity. Firstly, we will be looking at official specifications from both Boeing’s and Airbus’s websites. So, an A380 can be as heavy as almost 360 Toyota Camrys when it takes off, and a 747-8 as heavy as 280 of them.The maximum cruise speed of an A380 is Mach 0.89 (89% of the speed of sound in air) while the two newest variants of the 747 (“-400” and “-8”) can cruise at a speed of Mach 0.855.While in normal circumstances, the aircraft wouldn’t operate at speeds faster than the above, let’s also take a look at their MMo – maximum operating limit speed.
Lastly, it’s likely that Airbus would have price matched the 747 for any customer (Ultimately, the A380 was the realization of a dream. The older 747 variants have an even faster MMo of Mach 0.92.The aircraft might fly even faster than that during test flights (or rarely in emergency situations), though.While some sources cite the A380 as being able to fly a couple of hundred miles further than a 747-8 could, according to the official marketing documents of both That said, the older 747s had nowhere near the range of the A380 or the 747-8 and 747-400. When it comes to technical specifications, we will primarily be comparing the latest version of each model: The Additionally, we will pretend that we are an airline that is looking for a large capacity aircraft for both passengers and cargo.