The world’s biggest plane is making an unexpected comeback as demand grows for air travel.
The Airbus A380 stormed onto the world stage in 2007 when it made its first commercial flight.
When it debuted, it overtook the long-reigning Boeing 747 as the world’s biggest passenger plane.
The A380 has four engines and is a full double-decker that can carry more than 800 people depending on an airline’s cabin layout.
However, Airbus put an end to production of its £336 million superjumbo in 2021 after airlines opted for smaller, more fuel-efficient twin-engine jets.
Additionally, with industry forecasts predicting a decline in demand for business and first-class class seats, operators saw no future for the behemoth.
Premium seats may only account for one-quarter of the double-decker but they generate three-quarters of its operating profit.
But a combination of rising demand and constrained fleets has forced airline operators into a major rethink.
Lufthansa, Qatar Airways, Korean Air, Japan’s ANA and the Abu Dhabi flag carrier Etihad have all decided to re-introduce the “king of the skies”.
Airlines had planned to replace the A380 with Boeing’s 777X, the world’s largest and most efficient twin-engine jet.
But production of the plane is years behind schedule, as Boeing tries to get to grips with supply-chain hold-ups and deal with the fallout from its troubled 737 Max.
At the same time demand for air travel has exploded post-Covid, growing by a whopping 64 percent in 2022.
It is forecast to grow by another 9.8 percent by the end of this year, as the good times return to a sector that at stage looked to be on its knees during the pandemic.
To solve the problem, airline companies have turned to the trusted and universally popular Airbus superjumbo.
Overall, 145 Airbus A380s are back in the air, spread across 10 airlines, according to aviation analysts ch-aviation.
And such has been the revival, that Christian Scherer, the head of Airbus’s civil aircraft division teased that production of the plane could be resumed.
He told the German newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt that while the door to the A380 production line “is closed, it is not locked. In industry, nothing is ever ruled out.”
And it comes as new British flyer Global Airlines looks to use A380s for flights between London and New York and Los Angeles next year, carrying between 450 and 475 passengers across the Atlantic.