I was at LAX last Tuesday and Friday and I saw three Qantas Boeing 747's sitting away from the gate but I never say their Airbus A380. Now I'm reading articles that the A380 is causing problems for the airport and Qantas is thinking about flying the plane to SFO. Furthermore, V Australia and Delta are now flying 777's to Sydney and prices on flights to Australia have taken a nosedive. Any comments? I'm just curious.

In general, they operate A380 SYD-LAX every other day on QF11/12. 744 on the other day.

The other daily SYD, as well as those from MEL, BNE and AKL are all 744.

DH flew out of LAX last week and he said his plane taxied right past one of the 380's.

I guess I was at LAX on the wrong days. I saw 3 747's but not the Airbus. There are some interesting articles on the Internet about how the large plane is causing problems at LAX.

Compared to other major gateway airports in the US, LAX is really not the busiest in terms of plane movement. A 380 will not cause that much operation problem here.

They actally show A380 flying direct to MEL at least on the Wed I was looking at in May. ?QF 93 & 94

articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/25/local/me-airbus25

Here is a link to an article about the problems the A380 is causing at LAX. Hopefully, they will get the problems worked out.

jules39 - You're correct. 93/94 is operated with the A380 twice a week. 5 times with 744.

wally - I've read that article. My point is that LAX can afford to "come to a halt" when the 380 is here. It's just not that busy. Other airports like ATL or ORD with a lot more aircraft movements per hour will be affected much worse IF they have to come to a halt like LAX does.

To add to rkkwan's thoughts: LAX has also invested a tremendous amount of money into renovating their taxiways (and the future multi-million dollar renovation of Tom Bradley Int'l Terminal) to accommodate for the influx of A380 arrival and departures. They've made a huge investment in the A380 and, in return, more and more airlines are going to be sending them to LAX in the coming 10 or so years.

Until the infrastructure upgrades are completed to all taxiways and affected terminals, then it's going to present a minor headache to airport traffic everytime one of those heavies shows up. But, as Ray has mentioned, LAX certainly can afford the slight hiccup here and there since there's only 1 of them coming and going right now.

Here are some numbers for 2008.

LAX has total of 615,525 aircraft movement (takeoff or landing) with 4 parallel runways.

Compared to:

ATL has a total of 978,824 movements with 5 parallel runways.
LHR has a total of 478,569 movements with 2 parallel runways.
LGW has a total of 263,653 movements with single runway.

Here's a list of some of the problems Qantas has had with the A380 (independent of any issues with LAX):

http://airlineworld.wordpress.com/20...ems-at-qantas/

Some of the aircraft have indeed been removed from service for short periods. The article also contains a link to a few incidents at Singapore airlines.