QF12 - Bad weather forces A380 to land in Noumea

[Nigel C]

I believe one of the reasons Airbus didn't install thrust reversers on the 1 and 4 engines of the A380 was to help enable their use on 45m runways too. They most probably recognised too that some of the older airports (like Sydney) had no way of complying with having 60m wide runways due to geographical restraints.