Will the A380 be too big? Any thoughts?

[Buzz]

Instead of a nose cargo door, wouldn't it be easy to imagine a backdoor with a ramp like on the military transport planes?

Any idea whether Airbus has such plans for the A380?

Nice idea, but not possible, due to the fact it has 3 decks, not one, like the military planes. The military ones are allso configured so that verhicles can be easily transported, something a regular cargo hauler isn't meant to do (very often). I would imagine military cargo is more outsised, that the containers the A380 is meant to take...
If it where possible, the 747 could have a front ramp ( a long one though), but they prefer a lift, so would it be that good of an idea for regular cargo?

[Buzz]

It's a nice extra, but if it was intended as a cargo hauler, it would have had a cocpit on the upper deck and a nose door at least...
Now it's only good for smaller cargo (express like FedEx etc is perfect for it), and not the large cargo the 747 is good at.

Nice analysis Buzz !! I didn't realize that yet. But as you mentioned the B744F will still keep a big advantage compared to the A380F, and that's the nose cargo door. So in fact both planes the A380F and the B744F could be complementary and not really big competitors

Chris
8)

Thank you!

That is indeed the reason most (objective) speculations about the 747 are (on A.net etc) that the pax 747 will disappear, but the cargo will have a long life to come... The 747 line is producing a high % of cargo plane nowadays, I believe I've read somewhere 40-50 %, not sure though...