Airbus delivers the latest A380, the world’s largest commercial aircraft

The last copy produced by Airbus goes to an airline in Dubai. Economically, the model is considered a failure. But there are those who believe that, despite everything, the project was worth it.

Tim Clark, president of Emirates Airlines, really wanted to participate in a historic event scheduled for this Thursday (16) in Hamburg – the delivery to his airline of the last Airbus A380, the 251st and last giant plane to be built.

In all, 123 of them went to the Dubai-based company and, without Emirates, everyone agrees, the program would have been discontinued years ago.

Airbus test pilots said goodbye to the aircraft last Sunday (12) and flew in a heart-shaped route, according to the company’s Twitter message posted on Monday (13).

In 2019, it was announced that production would end in 2021. Tim Clark, now 72 and an industry legend, is someone who believed in the Airbus A380 like few others, recognizing early on that the world’s largest passenger aircraft, which at Emirates can accommodate up to 615 passengers, was tailored to the company’s business model that connects the world via Dubai.

Discussion about showers

He first had to build cabin models at his own expense, in order to teach Airbus that it was possible to install two showers on the upper deck — right where he wanted them.

So Airbus and engine manufacturers refused to offer an improved version with engines more efficient than the four fuel-hungry engines that had long made the A380 an uneconomic choice for most airlines.

And last but not least, Tim Clark couldn’t even arrange the final delivery of an A380 with the pomp and circumstance he wanted. Airbus refused from the start to celebrate the end of a program, and so the pandemic situation in Germany ruined Emirates’ plans to celebrate the date.

It’s not a funeral, but it’s sad anyway

“I told Airbus head Guillaume Faury: ‘For us, the A380 is full of life, this isn’t a funeral, it’s the last of these magnificent planes,'” Clark reported in an interview with DW. “We will be flying the A380 as a very powerful aircraft until the mid-2030s. So it will be another 14 or 15 years before we take them off the air.”

Now, the last A380 has been transferred, without ceremony, from the Airbus factory in Hambugo to Dubai this Thursday (16). Emirates will then have 118 A380s in operation, about half of which are waiting for better times to fly again.

The pandemic wiped out the remaining giants, the A380 and Boeing 747, whose production will also stop in 2022 after more than 50 years and against which the A380 should compete.

In the second half of 2021, however, air traffic numbers soared so quickly that some airlines realized that with the A380 fleet, which was actually already considered out of the deck, they had something that was now perfect to handle. acute problems.

A good example is British Airways, which has returned to operation four of its twelve giants that have been deactivated since November. Singapore Airlines, which celebrated the giant’s world premiere in 2007, is also doing a similar thing and is using some of the four-jet engines again, including for London and Sydney.

Qatar Airways turnaround

Particularly curious is the turnaround of the A380 at Qatar Airways, which previously operated ten of them. “In retrospect, buying the A380 was the biggest mistake in our company’s history,” the company’s eccentric boss Akbar Al Baker said in May.

“We deactivated the A380. And we never wanted to fly it again, because it’s a very inefficient aircraft in terms of consumption and emissions, and I don’t think there’s a market for it for the foreseeable future,” criticized Al Baker. “I know passengers love the aircraft, it’s very quiet, it’s smart, but the damage it does to the environment must be the priority, not the comfort.”

And now? Suddenly there is a problem with the shortage of A350 aircraft, which are more modern. “Unfortunately, we have no choice but to fly the A380 again,” announced the head of Qatar Airways in late September. Since November, the company has reactivated five of its giants.

Who let the giant bird die?

Why was the A380, which cost about €30 billion (£193.1bn) mostly in European taxpayer money, a complete failure, at least economically? There are many reasons. “The engine manufacturers took us by surprise,” said John Leahy, legendary retired Airbus aircraft salesman, in an interview with the author of his book “A380 – The Last Giant.”

Only ten years later did they want to offer better engines — but they were secretly developed and used much more quickly by the smaller, more efficient competitor Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

The main problem was the years of delays in the development and manufacture of the A380. It became painfully clear that Airbus factories in Germany and France were not working with compatible computer systems.

When the A380 finally hit the market in 2008, the timing was extremely bad: the then rampant Sars pandemic and the global financial crisis caused demand for large aircraft to collapse.

Ultimately, Boeing’s prediction came true, and the market demanded smaller, more efficient aircraft that could also economically operate on long-haul, uninterrupted routes between secondary airports.

Thanks to the 787 and its competitor, the Airbus A350, nonstop flights suddenly appeared between Düsseldorf and Tokyo or Munich and Bogota; passengers prefer not to connect at major airports. In the face of such massive traffic, Airbus was left behind with its giants.

Even so, aircraft manufacturers and industry experts don’t consider the A380 all that useless, despite its economic failure. Airbus was forced to grow together and, for the first time, act and appear as a single company.

The learning effect was immense: “The whole fiasco around the A380 made the A350 the best aircraft program we’ve ever had,” said John Leahy, former Airbus Top Salesperson.