Not long ago, it looked like the reign of the Airbus A380 as Queen of the Skies was ending. But one airline, Emirates, is not only bringing back its A380s with a vengeance but investing up to $2 billion dollars in refreshing its planes and instituting a whole new class of Premium Economy service.
The Airbus A380 Makes An Improbable Comeback
02.08.2023 - 07:01 / forbes.com / Richard Branson / Willie Walsh
Didn’t COVID-19 kill the jumbo jet? Not so fast.
With the end of COVID and the return of mass tourism, mothballed Airbus A380s are starting to make an improbable comeback.
At the height of the pandemic, just one of over 200 Airbus A380 aircraft was said to be in service. The rest were grounded, dispatched to aviation boneyards like Mojave, or scrapped. The era of the jumbo giant was apparently over.
Air travel dropped more than 60% during the first year of COVID. In the first months of the lockdowns imposed by the world’s major cities, flights dropped by as much as 96%. (Some claimed a silver lining, as ultrafine particle pollution dropped 48%.)
With few planes flying, jumbo jets were the first to go into mothballs or to the wrecker’s yard. There was no need to crew and fuel a jumbo jet for a flight with 50 people.
The pandemic proved the end for many agining jumbo jets. A searing picture went over the wires of one of Sir Richard Branson’s signature Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747s in a wrecking yard. It lacked wings and windows, but still featured an image of performer Dita Von Teese as nose art.
Airbus ended manufacture of the A380 in 2021, with just 252 of the 500 passenger double-deckers built. The plane required a crew of 23 (two pilots and 21 flight attendants), special airport gates, strengthened runways for its million-pound take-off weight, and plenty of kerosene for its four thirsty engines. Airbus once claimed that the A380 offered “lower fuel consumption and significantly improved CO2 emissions per passenger kilometer,” but that claim rested on the aircraft always flying full, which was certainly not always the case.
But volume travel is back. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) predicted earlier this year that global air traffic level will reach more than 95% of pre-pandemic levels in 2023. Some 4.35 billion people are expected to travel in 2023, close to the 4.54 billion flyers in the previous peak year, 2019.
Now that the pandemic seems under control, the great queens of the sky are making a comeback. Etihad, Emirates, Lufthansa, Qantas, British Airways and other airlines, including a new start-up, are putting the A380 back to work.
"The pandemic years are behind us, and borders are open as normal,” says IATA Director General Willie Walsh. “Despite economic uncertainties, people are flying to reconnect, explore, and do business.”
The airline industry would prefer the new generation of long-range narrowbody aircraft. Not only are they capable of economical 4,000-mile point-to-point flights, with just 180 to 200 seats, they’re easier to fill with paying passengers than a 500-seat A380.
But aircraft like the Airbus A321XLR are backordered, so airlines are painstakingly pulling
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