Inside the Archive #18 | Airbus A380

With the 747s also gradually being phased out of service as smaller and more efficient wide-body twinjets like Boeing’s 777 and 787 Dreamliner gained popularity with cost-conscious carriers, Airbus never made back its $25 billion development costs on the A380. The planemaker announced it was ending its A380 program in 2019 after major customer Emirates pulled an order for 39 of the aircraft to replace them with smaller A330neos and A350-900s. The final A380-800 – the only variant ever built – was delivered to Emirates in 2021, and now flies as A6-EVS. In total, 254 were built (including three test aircraft) for 15 airlines, five of which (Air France, China Southern, Hi Fly Malta, Malaysia Airlines, and Thai Airways) have retired them altogether.

Still, the A380 isn’t quite the white elephant some might call it – its huge typical passenger capacity of around 525 does make it excellent for moving a lot of people at once through hubs like Singapore and Dubai, connecting Asia and Australia with Europe and the Americas. Emirates, the largest operator of A380s, has 116 in its fleet, and its president Sir Tim Clark as recently as 2023 was agitating for an A380neo with new, more efficient engines.

As for Qantas, while it plans to transition from A380s to A350-1000s in the 2030s, the national carrier still deploys the superjumbos on services to London via Singapore, as well as to Johannesburg and the United States. Pictured in an image by Seth Jaworski at Sydney in 2009 is VH-OQA “Nancy-Bird Walton”, the Flying Kangaroo’s first A380, whose engine infamously exploded in the QF32 incident after departing Singapore almost exactly 15 years ago on 4 November 2010. After a harrowing almost two hours in the sky, the plane was able to land safely despite the odds, under the command of Captain Richard de Crespigny. VH-OQA returned to service in 2012, and after a break during COVID-19, still flies for Qantas today.