Why I Don't Want to Fly Airbus 380

The Airbus 380 is on its US marketing tour these days. I was actually highly impressed with the plane. The geek side of me thinks that A-380 is quite a magnificent engineering feat. Despite the problems Airbus is facing, such as production delays, I think the plane will transform the future of air travel. It's good for the environment and make travel cheaper (assuming airlines can fill all the seats), as the plane has the best fuel economy per seat/mile.

Well, a couple days ago I read an article in WSJ, that partly described problems with Los Angeles Int'l airport. The airport, especially the Tom Bradley International terminal is operating beyond its capacity. I used to fly internationally a lot to and from LAX, and for some reason my flight often arrived early (maybe because I don't fly United, American and the likes). So my typical LAX International terminal experience was something like the following:

We landed 1-2 hours earlier than scheduled. Then the captain said "Thank you for flying Singapore Airlines... Uhh thanks to favorable wind we're early, which is good news, however we don't have our gate yet. So we have to sit in the tarmac until that Korean Airlines 747 leaves the gate. Please remain on your seat and refrain from leaving your seat due to security regulation." OK 3 hours later (1 hour behind scheduled arival time) the captain is back on the PA system: "Sorry, the plane hogging our gate is delayed because a passenger didn't show up and it took them some time to find and unload his baggage." I guess finding parking for an airplane in LA is as difficult as finding parking spot for my car. OK back to the story, it takes me on average 2 hours to clear immigration and pick up my bag. I usually fly 777 or Airbus 340, so you can imagine the time from aircraft gate to the curb rises exponentially when I fly a 747 or there were multiple planes arriving at the same time.

So I can imagine once those Airbus 380's start flying, I will have to race with a horde of 500-800 other people to clear immigration, not to mention that there's more bags for the ground handler to process. Oh did I mention that LAX will only have 2 gates that can handle A 380? Thank God i am not in LA anymore and I have to admit that SFO's international terminal is marginally better. But still, I don't think US airports are prepared to process the volume of passenger that Airbus 380 will bring. Especially with the ever changing security process and regulations. I can imagine that I will need to show up in airport 4 hours before departure and probably 5-6 hours to clear customs and immigration upon arrival.

Hopefully there's a stealth phase startup out there developing teleportation transporter a-la Star Trek's Enterprise.