Air France is retiring all nine of its A380s immediately.
The Airbus A380 has become the latest victim of the global pandemic. Air France recently announced that it would be phasing out its entire fleet of double-deckers with the “definitive end” taking effect immediately rather than by the end of 2022, as previously scheduled. Air France currently has nine Airbus A380s in its fleet – five are owned by Air France or are on a financed lease, and four are on operating leases. This move is expected to result in a write-down of 500 million euros (approximately $549 million) as the airline looks to conserve cash in any way possible.
While Air France is the first airline to retire its entire raft of A380s, it is not the only airline to indicate that it will leave the once-promising jumbo jet in its wake. In April, German carrier Lufthansa announced it would retire six of its 14 A380s earlier than scheduled, and Emirates, the world’s largest operator of the aircraft with over 100 in its fleet, is reportedly considering retiring nearly half of them early as a result of the pressures now facing the aviation industry.
Airbus originally conceived the A380, with two complete decks, as an answer to Boeing’s iconic 747. Even as Boeing shifted toward a leaner design direction with the single-deck 777 and 787 aircraft, Airbus continued developing the A380 in the late 1990s and early 2000s. With seating for around 500 passengers in a typical configuration, Airbus pitched the plane to airlines as a capacity-rich option to shuttle large numbers of passengers from their hubs to major destinations on high-traffic routes.
The A380 made its debut in 2005 and was touted as the future of aviation, with companies like Singapore Airlines, Emirates, British Airways and Qantas all betting on the bird. Air France has had the enormous plane in its fleet since 2009, using it to operate routes from its hub at Paris Charles De Gaulle to Los Angeles, New York JFK and Shanghai Pudong, among others. But, like other carriers, it always struggled to make the jet a profitable part of its fleet due to high operational and maintenance costs.
