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Posted on 02/20/2026 7:07:44 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Ten airlines continue to fly the Airbus A380 on a scheduled basis. As everyone knows, Emirates is overwhelmingly the largest user of the type. According to ch-aviation, it still has 116 frames. They include A6-EDF, which turned 20 this month; it is the world's oldest active superjumbo.
Emirates was not the launch customer of the double-decker. Singapore Airlines was. Nonetheless, the Gulf giant's first passenger-carrying A380 took place in August 2008...
If routes with fewer than five departures are excluded, only 11 destinations have ceased seeing the equipment. In comparison, Singapore Airlines has ended 12 A380 routes, while BA has ceased eight.
The list includes four US airports. It also includes Bahrain and Medinah... the pilgrimage-driven market of Medinah has seen the A380 in four different years, including in January 2026. It is possible that flights to both places will return later this year...
When all 23 routes are combined, the A380 had 8,980 departures (double for both ways)... Dubai to Beijing Capital had a massive 53% of them... for 13 years. It operated between 2010 and 2020... was again deployed in 2023, with the final departure taking place on January 1, 2024.
First-class-equipped superjumbos were deployed to Beijing. The two-class, non-first-class, 615-seat configuration was not used. While a daily flight typically existed, a double daily offering was available at times, such as from July 2017 until February 2020 and again from September 2023 until the type's withdrawal a few months later. Since then, the route has been in the hands of the 777-300ER. Note that Guangzhou and Shanghai Pudong will continue to see the A380 in 2026.
Since Emirates' first commercial A380 flight in August 2008, its shortest-ever passenger-carrying operation was from Dubai to Muscat... only marginally longer than from Boston to Newark.
(Excerpt) Read more at simpleflying.com ...
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Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
James lives and breathes route development. Educated in Air Transport Management at Loughborough University and Cranfield University, James has a PhD in airline strategy. James was Market Opportunity Analyst at London Luton Airport and Chief Analyst at anna.aero. He taught airline strategy and economics to undergraduate and postgraduate students for five years and has worked closely with multiple carriers on route and market intelligence projects. He is based near London, UK.
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The A380 proves the adage that just because you can build something, it doesn’t mean you should. It was, and is still in search of a competitive niche.
CC
This article explains it pretty well, and it deals with the risk of having only partially filled aircraft when the capacity is so large, and the range is not a key factor with the introduction of planes that have less capacity, don't cost as much, are cheaper to maintain, and can fly similar distances:
I flew Business Class on the A380 Dubai to Miami about 10 years ago. Amazing experience.
Especially with that short run mentioned in the excerpt — unlikely to need that much capacity, even twice a day, better to offer more flights per day with full planes.
If it isn’t Boeing I’m not going.
More like Airbus gambled that the hub and spoke system where planes flew to a central location for dispersal to other airports would remain in place. Instead airlines went with customer demand and added more direct flights, bypassing the hubs.
Airbus could have converted them to cargo jets but management decided to end that program.
I went to an aviation website to get some current information on the reasons, but the people who made a lot of posts there didn’t shed any light on the technical reasons.
They just talked about how much they loved flying on the plane and I get that. I would love to fly on one.
But to those folks posting to that aviation oriented site, there didn’t seem to be any understanding of why the routes were being cut. They didn’t even discuss it.
It just isn’t profitable when you can’t fill the seats consistently, the aircraft is expensive to maintain, the routes are limited to large destinations, and the manufacturer lost somewhere between $17 and $25 billion dollars on the plane.
Crazy.
t all boils down to that old hub-and spoke/point-to-point argument that began decades ago, and was up in the air when range disparities in aircraft types made a difference. When planes like the 777 and 787 got the range and the FAA approval to fly that range on two engines, that really ended the debate there when you have one plane that can fly both the Hub-and-spoke model AND the point-to-point model, where the other one can only really fly the point-to-point model (In the case of the A-380 which requires specialized infrastructure and forces it into a point-to-point model)
When the plane first launched my dad and I both worked at Boeing and we were both perplexed. We couldn’t see how anyone could hope to keep such a large plane filled enough to justify it. Boeing looked at a full-double-decker 747 and concluded markets couldn’t support it.
It couldn't technically be done because it would have required extensive structural changes to the plane that rendered it impossible, never mind economically because the 747 has survived and thrived as a long distance freight hauler because it can land at standard airports where the A380 could not.
The A380 is mostly a status symbol for Airbus (as it IS a technical achievement) but it has difficulty being economical in the market.
It's good to be king is the operative principle, but if it were good all the time the king wouldn't have bought them in the first place. It was a move to buy prestige, it backfired, and quality problems, maintenance costs, and (ironically) fuel costs kicked out some skids.
I fly a China Southern one from LAX to Guangzhou once. ONCE. Most miserable flight on my life.
Sardines have more space in the can.
Boeing debated this discussion internally at length during the early design phase, with many people strongly for a double deck configuration, and determined that double deck aircraft were not economically viable. It involved one of their most respected engineers simply used a tape measure in one of the meetings to demonstrate how much room they would use on the single desk concept, because many of them thought it would be too cramped, and he just showed them it wouldn't be with a tape measure. I had to ask Grok to look it up for me because I couldn't remember exactly, and it is fascinating:
QUESTION: In Joe Sutter's 747 book did he describe during the design phase the argument about single deck vs double deck was resolved with a tape measure?
ANSWER: Yes, in Joe Sutter's book 747: Creating the World's First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation (co-authored with Jay Spenser), he describes how the debate over a full double-deck (or twin-deck) design versus a single main deck with a partial upper deck (the iconic "hump") was resolved in a practical, hands-on way involving a tape measure.
Early concepts for the 747, strongly favored by Pan Am's Juan Trippe, envisioned a full-length double-decker aircraft—essentially stacking two narrow fuselages or creating a tall, full two-level cabin—to achieve the required passenger capacity without excessive length. Sutter and his team resisted this, citing issues like structural weight penalties, evacuation challenges (e.g., slide interference from upper-deck exits over the wings), servicing difficulties, and suboptimal cargo hold sizing relative to the plane's overall dimensions.
The turning point came when payload engineer Milt Heinemann (or in related accounts, a Boeing salesman/engineer in discussions with Trippe) used a tape measure to demonstrate the viability of a wide single-deck fuselage. By marking out the width needed to fit two standard 8x8-foot cargo containers side-by-side (inspired by CX-HLS military airlifter studies), they showed how a wider cabin—nearly 20 feet across—could accommodate 10-abreast seating, twin aisles, and efficient freight loading. This widebody approach eliminated the need for a full second deck, allowing a single main deck with only a short forward upper deck extension (initially for the cockpit and later a lounge/first-class area, with the hump faired for aerodynamics and future freighter nose-loading).
Sutter viewed the full double-decker as "clumsy" and problematic. The tape measure exercise helped convince stakeholders—including Trippe—that the wide single-deck configuration (with the partial hump) was superior for safety, efficiency, manufacturing, and versatility (passenger and cargo roles). This decision was one of the most critical in the program, shaping the 747's enduring design.
Accounts of the 747's development, including Sutter's own recollections, highlight this pragmatic moment as key to moving away from the double-decker assumption toward the final hump configuration.
I am assuming here, but the article only says they were eliminating using the planes, not that they were ending the actual routes. Am I wrong here? Replacing them with other aircraft more suitable to the traffic.
Boeing hedged their bets with the 747 and designed in structural elements that made it easier to convert them into freighters. That’s why the flight deck is above the main fuselage- it leaves room for a nose cargo door. So the 747 has largely left passenger service, but will keep flying as a cargo ship for the foreseeable future. Airbus could’ve done the same, but they chose not to. So now they have aircraft that can’t economically be turned into freighters.
CC
Yeah, the A380s are getting phased out. They’d already been getting phased out, but are still in use now and then in the remaining routes.
Sardine Airlines would be a bad name for the company, though, ya gotta admit. 😁
Elaine: “Well, we had a choice of steak or fish.”
Rumack: “Yes, yes, I remember, I had lasagna.
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