As reported in Les Echos this morning, Emirates is preparing to convert its current order for Airbus A380s into Airbus A350s, which are better suited to the new face of global air transport, and which offer significant capacity in their A350-1000 version.

Air transport no longer needs the 380

Even though Emirates continues to grow rapidly, and operates the largest A380 fleet in the world, its financial health is not good, in particular because passengers have also changed their expectations: ten years ago, the hub-and-spoke was not a question, but the offer available to passengers has been enriched by a host of airlines long-haul low-cost carriers such as Norwegian, which do not hesitate to use smaller modules to fly point-to-point to secondary destinations.

The A350, with its more flexible configuration, is ideal for this finer mesh, and Emirates’ traffic is such that it can increase frequencies without consuming more oil, thanks to its optimized engines.

Even second hand, nobody wants it anymore

The first A380s arrived on the second-hand market recently, with the sale of the very first ones delivered to Singapore Airlines to the wet-lease airline Hi Fly.

Problem: the plane has only flown 4 times under the colors of Hi Fly, on behalf of Air Austral, while the airline’s B787s were under maintenance… And had to stop following a collision with a jetway at Paris Charles-de-Gaulle.

Proof that nobody wants it: the FlightRadar24 site does not count any flight since the collision for this aircraft.

So who could restart the A380 assembly line? Does the plane still have a future?

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