Well, it's not quite as bleak as that Rich... They have a backlog of five years worth of production with 160 A380s on the books. They planned for break-even to occur in 2015, but that is becoming a challenge. They still need a “single-digit number” of production slots for the type in 2015 to break-even that year.
http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/avd_05_15_2013_p01-01-578735.xml
I did not read the link... But...
The A380 will probably never break even on an overall program level. The initial target was to break even after 250 aircraft. Then that was changed to be like 450ish. It has since been changed to an unspecified number, estimated to be above 600 units.
The break even point they talk about in 2015 is not program break even, but instead production break even. Meaning every plane up until that date in 2015(both past and future deliveries) has cost airbus more to manufacture than the amount they were paid for the plane by the respective airline. Only then will airbus start seeing profits on each aircraft rolling off the line.
Likewise, the 787 is sort of in the same boat, but it will break even and then some on the entire program level. The 787 program break even point is around 1100 units with production break even occurring in 2015 as well.
It was a cool video though. I wonder how long LH spent preparing to capture this with so many different views in the video.
