Re: A380 ugly?
"the 777's operating costs are lower and its ETOPS rating means there are almost no routes it can't match."
There's not much money to be made in PAX transport, which is why so many non-state airlines have gone titsup in the last couple of decades and had to be bailed out.
By the time you load all the passengers into a 777 there's not a lot of load capacity (mass, not space) left for revenue cargo when you're running long haul flights. It's essentially a passenger-optimised aircraft - big but can't carry much mass.
On the other hand an A380 has slightly less space available under the floor but it can carry more revenue cargo mass than a 777 on shorthaul duty over a greater distance than a longhaul 777 can - and air transport cargo is charged per kilo, not per container so this trick is profitable. The Higher ops costs are offset by more PAX income _and_ more cargo revenue.
(Apparently BA have tweaked their A380s to carry even more cargo mass. Probably something to do with those nasty lightweight seats)
The A380 has a couple of other tricks up its design sleeve - the wing seems oversized for the body because it is. Fuselage plugs can be dropped in whenever there's a demand for a -900 model, or the loading capacity can be used for a freighter if there's ever demand for such an item in future (with cheap fuel and lots of end-of-passenger-life aircraft being sold off at knockdown prices there's not much demand but it wouldn't take much of an uptick in oil pricing to change that equation, given the fuel consumption of the older planes).
Conversion to NEO was pretty much thought about from the outset and it's one of the few aircraft which have standardised interfaces on the wing pylon, meaning you can hang certfied engines form any maker without substantially rewiring the system (not that you would run RR + EA engines on the same wing or aircraft, but it's supposedly possible)
The end result _should_ be (best laid plans of mice&men and all that) that if there's enough demand to justify making a -900, or a freighter or NEO engines then it can happen fairly quickly.
I can't see Airbus shutting down the line even if production dipped to a half dozen airframes per year. It makes enough from the smaller ones to keep its halo project going. (State subsidy disputes are all about marketing. Boeing and Airbus are both about equally in the trough so any "victory" tends to be phyrric)