The first ever A380 superjumbo has gone into storage – so will it end up on the scrap heap?

Singapore Airlines returned the first Airbus A380 after only ten years of service
Singapore Airlines returned the first Airbus A380 after only ten years of service Credit: This content is subject to copyright./Monty Rakusen

For the first time ever, an Airbus A380 superjumbo has been retired from service and stored. The aircraft was grounded by Singapore Airlines in June after only 10 years of use, and will now be stored, minus its engines, in France.

Singapore Airlines, its first customer, returned the plane to its German leasing company Dr Peters Group, where it was painted white and flown to Tarbes Lourdes Pyrénées airport, close to the Airbus factory in Toulouse where it was originally built, to a storage facility that will hold it until a new owner is secured.

But whether that new owner will materialise at all is up for debate, given the A380's struggling sales since it was launched amid much fanfare in August 2007. It remains the world's largest passenger jet, with a total capacity of 853.

Singapore is poised to return more of its A380s
Singapore is poised to return more of its A380s

Dr Peters told Bloomberg that it was “optimistic” about securing a new operator for the aircraft, despite expecting the return of three more Singapore Airlines A380s, the second already grounded at Changi Airport. If the company can't find new homes for these planes, they will be broken up for parts - worth at least £75 million ($100 million) per plane. The A380's original list price was in the region of £190 million ($250 million) a piece. 

Which airline owns the most A380s?

Emirates, by a long way. With a fleet of 100, it's one of the few carriers able to get the maximum value out of the four-engine A380, and has made it the core of its long-haul fleet. Other airlines have ordered them in far smaller quantities: British Airways, for example, has 12 of them in its fleet of 270 aircraft.

The future of the A380 has been hanging precariously in the balance for quite some time now, with Airbus eagerly awaiting a lifeline order of up to 38 updated models from Emirates.

The deal was expected to be announced at the Dubai Airshow on Sunday, but in a shock twist, Emirates announced that it was actually buying 40 of rival Boeing's 787-10 Dreamliners as part of a new $15.1 billion (£11.5bn) deal.

Emirates chief executive Tim Clark told CNBC that he wouldn't rule out buying more A380s in future, however, and said he would tell the manufacturer to “keep the (production) line going.”

The UAE airline now relies solely on the Airbus A380 (it has 100) and the Boeing 777 (of which it has 165) for its flights, making it the largest operator of both.

According to Reuters, industry sources have said that in order to solidify new A380 orders from Emirates, Airbus will have to buy back or re-home some of the older models currently operated by the Gulf carrier, and guarantee it would not cancel production of the superjumbo going forward.

That, or convince other airlines to place orders. 

Which Airbus models are proving more popular?

It wasn't all doom and gloom for Airbus at the Dubai Airshow, with its smaller, sleeker models proving to be a mammoth hit.

The European company signed a record-breaking $49.5 billion (£37.6bn) deal on Wednesday to sell 430 aircraft to Indigo, a Phoenix-based private equity firm that owns Frontier Airlines.

In total, the order made up 273 A320neos and 157 A321neos - both smaller twin-engine, single-aisle planes which are popular thanks to their reduced fuel consumption. They will service Frontier-linked airlines including Chile's JetSMART and Hungary's Wizz Air.

Unlike its bigger sibling, the popularity of Airbus’ sleek A320s is so great that the company claims one takes off or lands somewhere in the world every two seconds.

Launched in 1984 and brought into service with Air France, its latest version, the A320neo, has won the accolade of being the fastest-selling commercial aircraft in history.

Why has the A380 fallen out of favour?

Industry commentators have long speculated that the A380 programme is on the way out, many saying that the gargantuan costs of operating such large aircraft were underestimated from the start.

In July of this year, after a series of ups and downs, Airbus announced it was drastically reducing the number of A380s it would be producing in future.

Reporting half-year figures, it said that “considering the current order booking situation”, deliveries of the A380 will be reduced to just eight in 2019. At last year’s Farnborough Airshow the company said it would slow production to just 12 a year by 2018, down from a rate of 27 the year before.

Aviation analyst Saj Ahmad from Strategic Aero Research said in July: “Cutting the A380 underlines the marketing disaster that belies the programme and that Airbus is realising that even life support has to be turned off - and it’s evident that day looms closer.”

Calling the superjumbo a vanity project that “needs to be killed off”, he said it was almost definitely “facing the barrel of execution”.

Independent Air Transport consultant John Strickland told the Telegraph: “The A380 is a well regarded aircraft by airlines which operate it and by customers flying on it. Generally however, twin-engine aircraft such as the Airbus A350 and the Boeing 777 reduce the financial risks involved with filling capacity and operating costs.”

So with Singapore Airlines' return of the first A380, and its future with Emirates more tentative than ever, does this spell the end of the superjumbo? We shall see. 

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