Is this the end of the Airbus A380?

Plane Talk: Airbus may soon stop making the ‘SuperJumbo’

On the last day of 2018, Airbus made a state-of-the-market announcement. It was headlined: “Airbus achieves new commercial aircraft delivery record in 2018”.

In a coincidental nod to its rival’s biggest aircraft, the European planemaker said: “Net orders total 747.”

But the biggest Airbus aircraft, the A380, may not live up even to the much-reduced potential of 87 outstanding orders.

Last year only a dozen “SuperJumbo” planes were delivered. Building these monsters at a rate of one a month might sound a reasonable pace – until you compare it with the other Airbus jets.

Even the classic A330, which entered service over a decade earlier than the A380, was coming off the production line at rate of four every month, while the Airbus bestseller, the A320, was managing 52 a month. And production of the double-decker is set to dwindle to only six a year.

The A380 is extremely popular with passengers. When I conducted a Twitter poll in December 2018 about the plane people prefer for a 10-hour overnight flight in economy class, the response was overwhelmingly for the SuperJumbo (the next three, a long way behind, were all Boeings: the 787, 777 and 747).

But it has not proved anything like so popular with airlines. The operating costs of this four-engined giant are huge, and so it needs to be deployed on routes where seats can be filled at healthy fares. Heathrow, the most slot-constrained airport in the world, is the A380’s natural home: the plane can extract the maximum number of passengers from each of those precious permissions to land and take off.

Yet the double-deck jet hardly has a commanding position. If you take a daydream about flying on Monday to Australia for a fortnight one stage further, few of the sub-£1,000 return flights from Heathrow to Sydney use an A380 for any part of the journey.

(The cheapest options, by the way, involve going west via the US and the Pacific – a reflection of the wide open spaces on transatlantic jets.)

The one hub where you can’t move for A380s is, of course, Dubai – another constrained airport, and the base of Emirates. The hometown airline has singlehandedly kept the production line open: accounting for almost half the deliveries so far, and 61 per cent of the outstanding orders.

But Emirates may be losing its appetite for the massive people-carriers. On the last day of January Airbus issued an opaque statement saying it is “in discussions with Emirates Airline in relation to its A380 contract”.

The additional remark that “details of Airbus’ commercial discussions with customers remain confidential” has not stopped people speculating. And I would like to add to that.

A year ago Emirates saved the A380 from extinction with an order for 20 more of the jets and options on a further 16.

Since then, the chances of a meaningful secondhand market for the plane have dwindled. Singapore Airlines retired four of its planes, and two of them are being taken apart for parts – after just 10 years’ service.

While the Portuguese charter carrier Hi-Fly has an adventurous plan to use the A380 to fill gaps in other airlines’ schedules, there is no sign of a Russian, Indian or Chinese operator picking up some of these planes cheaply and using them for high-density domestic or regional routes.

Add a row between Emirates and Rolls-Royce over engines for the A380, and it seems a fair bet that the airline is talking to the planemaker about converting A380 orders to the smaller A350.

That would make perfect sense: the A350 is a proper 21st-century aircraft which does not have quite the capacity of its older sister. Airbus has not re-engined the A380 to make it a more attractive financial proposition, and nor has it “stretched” the original -800 series, which would also reduce costs per passenger.

Meanwhile other buyers are thin on the ground. On Friday, Willie Walsh, boss of BA’s parent company, IAG, said that he is open to buying some more A380s – which could conceivably even go to its low-cost unit, Level – if the price is right. “The pricing of that aircraft has not been as attractive as we believe it needs to be,” he said.

Closing the A380 programme would cost Airbus a fortune, but the alternative is to keep a loss-making production line going in the forlorn hope that its appeal to airlines might improve within the next decade.

Where does that leave those many passengers who love the plane? While British Airways, Emirates and others will continue to fly it for a decade or more, the number of options will start to decline. And it is probably our fault: there is no significant evidence that people will pay a premium to fly the A380 compared with other jets.