Two decades on from its first test flight, why did the Airbus A380 not fly as high as hoped?

Twenty years ago today at an airfield in Toulouse, France, a group of men in orange jumpsuits climbed on board an Airbus A380 and carried out the first test flight of this double-decker aircraft.

In bright sunshine on April 27, 2005, in front of hundreds of aircraft enthusiasts, executives, camera crews and photographers, the superjumbo eased off the runway and climbed into the sky, heralding, it seemed, a new era in aviation.

Designed to carry, depending on seating configurations, more than 600 passengers, the A380 was primed to steal the Boeing 747 jumbo jet’s crown as the Queen of the Skies.

But sales of this double-decker model failed to take off as smoothly as the test aircraft did on that sunny day in France. When production ended more than three years ago – the final aircraft was delivered to Emirates in December 2021 – a modest 251 planes had been built and Airbus is not thought to have recouped its reported $30 billion research and development costs.

Boeing sold more than six times as many 747s and, despite taking to the air 35 years earlier than the A380, the 747 was still being made even after production of the A380 had ceased, with the last jumbo jet delivered in January 2023.

Late to the party

According to Dr Robert Mayer, an associate professor in air transport management at Cranfield University in the UK, the four-engined A380 “probably came too late”.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a bad aircraft, it’s just it came into service at a time when the focus was much more on twin-engined aircraft, which are cheaper to operate. Probably if it had been introduced a decade or two earlier it would have had similar success to the 747,” he says.

Reliability improvements mean that twin-engined planes can now be operated at greater distances away from emergency landing sites used in the event of mechanical problems. This makes them more competitive compared to four-engined planes, which are more expensive to operate and maintain.

For most airlines, smaller aircraft from Boeing or Airbus are sufficient to meet their needs, making the A380 “a bit of a specialist niche”, says Dr Nigel Dennis, a senior research fellow who studies the aviation sector at the University of Westminster in London.

“It doesn’t save a lot of money to fly one A380 instead of two Boeing 787s, for example. The two 787s give you 250 passengers each, whereas the A380 would give you 500 in one go,” he says.

“Most airlines would prefer the flexibility of the smaller aircraft and being able to operate at different times or adjust the demand by time of year.”

Rising traffic

Another issue, he says, is that between key destinations there is now “a lot more competition” than when the A380 was planned.

“The forecasts expected it to dominate the non-stop routes between Europe and Asia, and the expectation was that demand was going to grow rapidly in that market, which indeed it has for passenger travel,” he says.

“But instead of travelling on British Airways, Lufthansa, Cathay Pacific, Singapore, Qantas, Air China, and so on, many of those passengers are actually travelling via intermediate hubs on airlines like Emirates and Qatar. Turkish is another big competitor, Air India is coming up now on the rails as well.”

So with demand dispersed between more airlines, the need for any carrier to use ever-larger aircraft is reduced. As Dr Dennis puts it, the market that was envisaged for the A380 “just doesn’t exist”.

Paradoxically, he says, the success of airlines such as Emirates – overwhelmingly the biggest A380 customer, having bought almost half the aircraft manufactured – “killed the use of the A380 by everyone else”.

The model’s “rather poor cargo capability”, with rivals such as the Boeing 747 and 787 having greater capacity as a share of total payload, also counted against the A380, Dr Dennis says.

“Another point is that there aren’t as many slot-constrained airports as there were expected to be 20 years ago. It was thought that many of the major airports would be running out of capacity, but that hasn’t happened to the extent expected,” he says, citing factors such as short-haul flights moving away from major airports. This means that there is less pressure to maximise the number of passengers per flight.

For Middle East carriers such as Emirates or Qatar Airways, Dr Dennis says, however, bilateral air services agreements that regulate the number of flights on each route may be more of an issue than they are for western airlines, making the A380, with its vast capacity, more attractive for them.

Taking off

The A380 entered into commercial service with Singapore Airlines in 2007 and only around a decade later the same carrier began taking examples out of service. Rather than finding a new lease of life with other airlines, some of these earliest A380s have already been scrapped, having had a flying lifespan barely half of what is typical for a commercial airliner.

Not much later, when the pandemic hit global air travel, there were dramatic headlines suggesting that the coronavirus could be “the death of” or “the final call” for the A380.

However, a rapid bounce-back in demand for flights and bottlenecks on the delivery of new aircraft from both Boeing, whose 777X project has been delayed repeatedly, and Airbus, which has suffered supply chain challenges with its A350, mean that existing A380s are likely to remain in service for longer than some forecast.

Etihad Airways has been reactivating its A380 fleet after extended periods in mothballs, while Emirates has a major A380 refurbishment programme, indicating that the model is likely to remain a mainstay for the Dubai-based carrier for many years to come.

“Sometimes the dead live longer,” Dr Mayer says. “It had been said the aircraft would disappear in the post-pandemic world, but with the supply chain problems it’s very difficult to get other aircraft, so therefore the airlines decided to operate the A380 for longer.”

In another sign that the A380 still has a future, Global Airlines, a UK-based start-up long-haul carrier, recently unveiled the interior of its first refurbished A380, a second-hand aircraft that in May is set to make the company’s inaugural flight, from Glasgow to New York.

Analysts do not, though, expect the carrier to provide a home for large numbers of used A380s.

“It definitely won’t revive the A380 even if they make it work, I can’t see them flying a fleet similar in size to any of the other airlines in the coming years,” Dr Mayer says.

Sir Tim Clark, the president of Emirates, has called for production of the A380 to begin again, saying that in a modernised and re-engined form the aircraft could be competitive.

“It’s probably been good for Emirates – they’re still filling them,” says Kenny Kemp, the author of Flight of the Titans: Boeing, Airbus and the Battle for the Future of Air Travel.

“Maybe the way things have changed post-Covid, the A380 has a chance to rekindle what it’s meant to be – a plane more eco-friendly and more passengers per carbon dioxide [emitted]. It’s a super plane. It’s beautifully made. It would be great to see it back in more airports.”

It would, however, “be difficult to see” demand for a new version of the A380 being sufficient to justify restarting production, according to David Bentley, an airport analyst with CAPA – Centre for Aviation, a market intelligence provider. Airbus too has indicated that it is highly unlikely to make any more A380s.

“You cannot start rebuilding the A380 production line when it’s been wound down,” Mr Bentley says.

While the A380 never hit the heights expected, it has been popular with the travelling public. Passengers, Dr Mayer says, enjoy travelling on the aircraft, even if they are not willing to pay more to do so.

“I haven’t met anyone who said they didn’t like flying on the A380,” he says. “A lot of people still find it a spectacular aircraft that is just different to other aircraft.”