THE RISE AND FALL OF AIRBUS A380.

The Airbus A380 is the world’s largest passenger airliner. It is a wide body aircraft which was introduced to challenge the dominance of Boeing 747 on long haul routes throughout the world.

The Airbus A380 was first launched by Airbus on January 18, 2005 at it’s main plant in Toulouse in France.

It got it first customer as Singapore airlines on April 27, 2005. It can accommodate up to 853 passengers in total and is in use on highly busy air routes. It was given the name of “Super jumbo” by the people and it soon challenged Boeing 747 on long haul routes.

Since, because of it’s insanely high unit cost ($445.6 million), it was not made for small scale airlines and was not affordable to few of them. So it could not make it’s way in the world market.

Since it’s introduction in 2005 the A380 had got 313 firm orders an among which 234 has been delivered. Emirates is the largest operator of the type with 123 orders and 109 deliveries.

Today only a few airlines such as Emirates, Etihad airways, Qatar airways, Lufthansa, Qantas and Air France operates Airbus A380. The main reason for the setback is the trust of airlines on new Airbus A350 and Airbus A330 neo also on Boeing 777 and Boeing 787 dreamliner.

On 14 February, 2019 Airbus announced to end the production of the type by 2021.

The A380 stayed in the aircraft market for about 15 years and it could not pass the legacy of Boeing 747 which has recently celebrated its 50th anniversary since it’s introduction in 1969 by Pan Am World Airways and would retire by 2024.