China Southern says goodbye to A380s

In recent months had come only good news for those who love the Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger plane. After a nightmarish year and a half, many companies have brought the double-decker giant back into the air.

While Emirates never even thought to retire its fleet of more than 100 aircraft, other companies were divided between those who immediately sent their fleet to "scrap" and those who, for one reason or another, decided to wait before making a final decision.

Air France and Lufthansa were among the first to say enough is enough and pull the plug. Other airlines, however, decided to wait and are now flying A380s again. British Airways did it, Qatar did it, and even Etihad did it when everyone thought it was impossible.

In this landscape, there are those who, during the pandemic, never stopped their A380 fleet, quite the contrary. Among these carriers we find China Southern: in recent weeks. one of its pilots became a front-page star when it emerged the amount of days he spent in quarantine due precisely to his activities as a pilot of the A380.

Now, however, the company has announced that its fleet of five A380s will be decommissioned by the end of 2022. Historically China Southern has flown Airbus A380s mainly from Guangzhou to Amsterdam, Beijing, Los Angeles, and Sydney.

Why just now China Southern is abandoning the A380

There are several reasons for this. The first is surely the fact that China's borders are, probably, the last ones that will be reopened to the rest of the world. This means that the Chinese will not even be able to leave for years for nonessential reasons.

The second is that this plane could carry nearly 800 people, but it is not suitable to be converted for cargo: it has been used in this way in recent months, as have a great many other planes, but it is not the same thing to place parcels instead of seats, compared to using the traditional cargo system.

Finally, the fact that with oil prices once again at record levels, flying a four-engine plane becomes even more uneconomical than flying an A350 or Boeing 787.

In conclusion

We have seen how Airbus has decided to give away an A380, the second one entered service, to experiment with the use of hydrogen engines in aviation, but for the giant of the skies, now out of production, the sunset path has begun. Emirates will probably be the last to discontinue this model, which is likely to happen in the early years of the next decade.

For all of us A380 lovers, this means we still have several opportunities to fly on the most beautiful plane ever built by Airbus and second only to the iconic Queen of Skies, also destined to be less and less in the air and more and more on the ground.

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