“We’d rather meet customer demand with multiple flights a day between cities than by having one flight on one gigantic aircraft,” said Mr. Wagner.

Even Airbus concedes that its prospects are dim in the American market.

“In the near term, we are not expecting any sales to U.S. carriers,” Clay McConnell, an Airbus spokesman, said. “It is not saying that someday we won’t sell to the North American market. It’s just not in the near term.”

That outlook differs sharply from Airbus’s optimism in the late 1990s, when it predicted a global demand for 1,440 of its superjumbo jets, and forecast that at least 10 North American carriers would buy 281 superjumbos.

Airbus, in its global market forecast at the time, even went so far as to proclaim, “The 747 is now too small for many routes.”

In the air freighter market, the giants of the United States air cargo industry — Federal Express and United Parcel Service — have canceled nearly $6 billion in orders for a cargo version of the A380, a move that caused some freighter orders to migrate to Boeing.

Airbus has not helped itself — problems with the plane have delayed production. There are more than 300 miles of wires in the A380, and problems installing them have forced Airbus to announce two delays in its delivery schedule. The delivery problems have cost Airbus $3.3 billion so far and have led to layoffs of thousands of employees and the ouster of the chief executive.

By contrast, Boeing has forecast a global demand for only 325 superjumbo jets. Rather than design an entirely new plane, Boeing came up with a stretch version of the three-decades-old 747 and used it to poach orders from A380 customers who grew tired of waiting. Most recently, for instance, Lufthansa, one of Airbus’s core customers, put in an order for 20 stretch 747s.