Airbus A380

The A380 is an interesting plane in that it's the first answer to the long dominance of the 747...which, I believe is getting close to 40 years old now. On the other hand, many US domestic airlines have dropped the 747 if they had them at all. The reasoning is the idea that people would rather go in smaller aircraft directly to their destination...thus negating the "hub and spoke" system that's currently used. An aircraft that holds 555 passengers certainly is impressive, and I suspect that many world airlines plan on purchasing them for thier flagship carriers as a "message of dominace" for lack of a better term. In fact, the only mention of US carriers in this artical are UPS and FedEx. Unlike, passenger carriers, I can see a use for such large cargo aircraft in thier shipping systems.