What is replacing A380?

Back in 2019, at their annual conference, Airbus officials announced that the A350 would replace the A380 as the company's premier passenger plane due to financial factors. The A380 production ended with the departure of former Airbus CEO Tom Enders due to a lack of demand; the company had 17 orders in the backlog.



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Range and flexibility. Surprisingly, for all its size, the A380 can't go as far as the A350. The A350-1000 can travel more than 1,000 km (540 NM) further than the A380. Singapore Airlines has a special 'ultra-long-range' (ULR) A350-900, which operates on the longest route in the world, from Singapore to New York JFK.

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Now that the pandemic seems under control, the great queens of the sky are making a comeback. Etihad, Emirates, Lufthansa, Qantas, British Airways and other airlines, including new start-up Global, are putting the A380 back to work.

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For one, the Airbus A380 has almost double the space onboard compared to the Boeing 777 series, thanks to its second level. This means the airline can afford to be a little more abundant with its first class and business class offerings onboard the A380 compared to the Triple Seven.

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On 16 December 2021, Emirates received its 123rd A380, which was the 251st and last delivered by Airbus. The A380's estimated $25 billion development cost was not recouped by the time Airbus ended production.

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The A380 production ended with the departure of former Airbus CEO Tom Enders due to a lack of demand; the company had 17 orders in the backlog. After Emirates cut its A380 order by 39 aircraft, leaving just 14 on the backlog, the final decision was reached to terminate production on the A380.

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In terms of capacity, it is abundantly clear that the A380 can carry significantly more passengers than any 787 variant. With 525 passengers in a standard, three-class configuration, the A380 has a sizeable advantage over the Boeing 787-10, which seats 323 passengers across three classes.

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We can see that the smaller variants of the 787 have a better range than the larger 787-10. In fact, the mid-sized 787-9 even outranks the A380.

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For now, the upper limit for current and proposed aircraft seems to be around the 400-seat mark. Many current A380s are likely to be phased out over the next decade, if not sooner. As such, it seems very unlikely that we will see another aircraft of its size any time soon.

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A total of 251 Airbus A380s were built and delivered for civil aviation. How many A380s are still flying? As of May 2023, about 130 A380s are in service - but several airlines plan to reactivate more aircraft during the year.

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Is there a triple-decker plane? As we have already mentioned, technically speaking, the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 747 are triple-decked aircraft when including the cargo decks.

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Boeing's latest widebody is hoping to replace its most popular one. Now that the Boeing 747 program has officially come to an end with the delivery of the last 747-8F this month, we look to the future. Boeing is currently in the certification process for the 777X program, with the first deliveries scheduled for 2025.

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Specifically, the Airbus A380 handles turbulence very well!

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This high aspect ratio wing design combined with efficiency enhancing raked wing tips allow the 787 to be one of the fastest commercial aircraft (Mach 0.85 cruise speed) while consuming less fuel than today's comparably sized aircraft.

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The world's largest passenger plane has been mired by controversy since it took flight in 2007. Despite the ability to carry up to 500-800 paying passengers onboard, the plane was simply too expensive, too fuel hungry and too big to be practical in today's world.

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After being grounded for over three years, Lufthansa brought back some of its Airbus A380s as of the summer of 2023. The airline is planning on progressively bringing back more of these planes, and will eventually have all eight remaining A380s back in service.

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1 Emirates The airline took 123 Airbus A380s from Airbus, though seven are already listed as historic by ch-aviation, with 76 listed as active. The airline has over 60,000 seats installed across its Airbus A380 fleet, and in the single year of 2018, it scheduled over 61,000 flights.

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The amortization of the original investment was not considered in this equation. Based on this information, we can assume that the Airbus A380 program never turned a profit when we consider the huge investment the aircraft manufacturer made to start the program.

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The average hourly rental rate of the Airbus A380 is around 37,150 USD per hour.

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