Another victim of the Covid-19 pandemic, the fleet of nine Airbus A380 d'Air France will not be returned to service once the crisis has passed for the carrier. Air France had decided to ground these nine aircraft at the start of the pandemic, but the crisis hastened the decision to stop operating them. Originally, the company wanted to stop mining its super-jumbos by the end of the year 2022. It took delivery of its first A380s in 2009.
Against the backdrop of the current crisis and its impact on forecast business levels, the Air France-KLM group has announced the definitive end of operations for Air France's Airbus A380s. The airline's management has declared that its A380s will be replaced by A350 and Boeing 787 as part of a strategy aimed at making its fleet more competitive, adapting its capacity to reduced demand and also in order to meet more stringent environmental criteria with reducing its ecological footprint.
According to the analysis of data provided by OAG Schedules Analyser, the Airbus A380s represented 4.5% of the airline's total available seat capacity in 2019, i.e. 2.67 million seats. According to Air France's programme at the beginning of the year, the aircraft were assigned to 11 routes departing from CDG. These routes served AbidjanAtlanta, Dubai, Houston, Johannesburg and Los Angeles, Mexico, Miami, New York-JFK, San Francisco and Shanghai. In the past, the carrier has also served Singapore and Tokyo among others.
According to OAG, the largest Airbus A380 capacities were on the Paris CDG-New York route, with more than 550,000 round-trip seats deployed for 1,069 flights, followed by the Los Angeles (LAX) route with 375,648 seats for 728 flights, Mexico City with 369,456 seats for 716 flights, Shanghai Pudong with 364,296 seats for 706 flights and the Atlanta and Houston routes, which each had a capacity of 215,688 seats for 418 flights.
At the same time, Lufthansa announced at the end of last week the suspension of A380 flights for the remainder of the summer season to Houston, Miami, New York, Shanghai Pudong, Singapore from Frankfurt and to BostonLos Angeles, Beijing Capital, San Francisco and Shanghai from Munich. This winter, the airline will also withdraw the A380 on the Frankfurt-Bangkok, Frankfurt-Delhi, Frankfurt-Los Angeles and Munich-Miami routes. The flights will be operated by Boeing 747-8I and Airbus A350-900 in Frankfurt and by Airbus A350-900 from Munich. Post-COVID-19, Lufthansa will continue to operate seven A380s. In Europe, British Airways still operates 12 aircraft, as does the Portuguese charter airline HiFly with one aircraft.
