Covid Digs Deeper Hole for Airbus A380 | Aviation International News

Covid Digs Deeper Hole for Airbus A380

With only three A380s operating in scheduled service, the future looks bleak for the big quadjet.

A China Southern A380 takes off from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport in August 2019. The airline remains the only carrier to operate A380s in scheduled service during the Covid-19 crisis. (Photo: Flickr: Creative Commons (BY) by verchmarco)

By Gregory Polek • Senior Editor

May 26, 2020

Airbus plans to wrap up production of the A380 "by 2021," heralding the beginning of the end of a sort for the superjumbo. The increasingly undesirable economics of the big quadjet, which entered service for the first time with Singapore Airlines in October 2007, had already begun to force it out of favor with its biggest operators, most notably the carrier that flies roughly half the world fleet—Dubai’s Emirates. Airbus announced its plans to cease production by 2021 after Emirates dropped orders for 39 of the airplanes and effectively replaced them with 40 A330-900s and 30 A350-900s. Now, as the Covid-19 crisis effectively cut international flying by 95 percent within a matter of a couple of months, most of the world’s biggest commercial aircraft sit grounded.

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