“The Dubai-based carrier has 111 A380s in its fleet.”
Dang! Moving 500 bodies per trip? That’s a lot of folks moving around by air.
An airliner sitting and baking at 110 degrees on a tarmac, then suddenly climbing to 30,000 feet with the outside temperature of -35 degrees puts an inordinate strain on any metal surface. One would assume and hope that the aeronautical engineers who design these aircraft did well in their material science courses and that these cracks are indeed superficial and no danger to the structural integrity of the aircraft. Yet given the computer engineering flubs at Boeing, confidence has been a bit eroded lately.