Are Qantas and Emirates retiring Airbus A380 Superjumbos?

Qantas and Emirates are planning to retire the immense Airbus A380, which changed commercial air travel with opulent first-class suites, in-flight showers, bars, and lounges. The superjumbo experience, however, will still be available to aviation enthusiasts for a few more years as it discovers support amid the post-pandemic travel boom.

In 2008, Emirates and Qantas added the A380 to their fleets after Singapore Airlines (SQ), the launch client, did so first. Within the next ten years, the airlines plan to retire their superjumbos. Vanessa Hudson, the new CEO of Qantas, recently disclosed that the airline’s final ten A380s would be phased out over the next decade, during an aviation industry event in Istanbul.

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In addition, Qantas intends to adopt the Airbus A350 beginning in late 2025. With Qantas’ ambitious Project Sunrise, this action is in line. It then intends to start nonstop flights to places like New York and London. Emirates, the largest A380 client and a consistent advocate of the aircraft, has committed to retiring its massive superjumbo fleet on a similar schedule.

The airline’s A380s will continue to be flown by Emirates through the end of the next decade, but they will start to be phased out starting in 2032, according to Emirates President Sir Tim Clark, who was present at the same conference in Istanbul.

These aircraft allowed for the annual transportation of more than 50 million passengers to a variety of locations around the world before the epidemic. Sir Tim Clark is still of the opinion that Airbus should have pursued the development of a next-generation A380 rather than ending the programme in 2019. Emirates intends to bolster its post-A380 fleet with extra Airbus A350s and Boeing 777s.

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While Qatar Airways has also announced that it will retire its fleet of Airbus A380 superjumbos once deliveries of more fuel-efficient aircraft, such as the A350, commence.

CEO Akbar al-Baker said in a press conference at the Paris Air Show that the A380s were unexpectedly pressed back into service in November 2021 as a stop-gap measure to help deal with increasing demand when nearly half of Qatar Airways’ Airbus A350 fleet was grounded due to allegations of fuselage degradation. The A380s had initially been earmarked for retirement as the pandemic took hold.

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