The Super Jumbo era has ended with delivery of the final A380 by Airbus to Emirates. The aircraft, registered as A6-EVS, was the 123rd and final new A380 to join Emirates, ending the airline’s steadfast 21-year commitment to the programme, which saw it order nearly half of the 251 aircraft ultimately sold by Airbus.
Following delivery of the airline’s final A380, Sir Tim Clark, President, Emirates Airline said, “The A380 is a truly special aircraft in so many ways. For Emirates, it gave us the opportunity to redefine the travel experience, efficiently serve demand at slot-constrained airports, and bolster our network growth. The A380 will remain Emirates’ flagship product for the coming years, and a vital pillar of our network plans.”
Since entry into service in 2007, A380’s have carried more than 300 million passengers on over 800,000 flights, with the aircraft exhibiting an excellent safety record. The giant A380 however, never went on to achieve the iconic status or sales success of Boeing’s 747 Jumbo Jet, but nonetheless will remain an impressive technological achievement as the largest civil aircraft in history.
Stalled Success
The A380 was the first new aircraft programme of the 21st century and enabled the four Airbus countries to work together and adopt common development and industrialisation methods. Launched by Airbus in December 2000 as the A3XX, in response to growing airport congestion, the aircraft was meant to connect and serve global air traffic hubs.
Emirates, which operated from a unique geographical position allowing it to connect Dubai to all the world's airports such as Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, São Paulo, Singapore or Sydney, shared the same vision and signed up as the launch customer for the Super Jumbo at the 2000 Farnborough Air Show.
Unfortunately for Airbus, the appetite for a large aircraft such as the A380 was impacted by the September 11 airline hijackings and suicide attacks in the USA in 2001, following the global financial crisis in 2008 and also by developmental challenges, which delayed entry into service.
The A380 began commercial operations in October 2007 with Singapore Airlines and was eventually ordered by only 14 airlines – Asiana, British Airways, China Southern, Emirates, Etihad, Korean Air, Lufthansa, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways and All Nippon Airways (ANA).
Airbus had originally hoped to sell nearly a thousand A380s to more efficiently serve demand at slot-constrained airports, help airlines to increase their network and provide passengers with an unmatched travel experience in its large and comfortable cabin. When it entered service, the A380 – particularly quiet for a large four engine jetliner and its double deck fuselage, large cabin area and use of cutting-edge technologies – took passenger comfort to the next level, transforming the idea of air travel. Emirates in particular pushed the boundaries on design and cabin innovation for the A380.
“Many of the innovations developed on the Emirates cabin were a first for Airbus, such as the first class showers, lighting scenarios and the recent premium economy cabin. Emirates has challenged us and given us confidence in our cabin expertise. We are extremely proud of what we have achieved together on this aircraft,” said Michael Lau, an A380 Industrial Designer in Hamburg.
Emirates continues to upgrade its A380 fleet and announced at the 2021 Dubai Airshow in November, that it would retrofit 52 of its existing A380 aircraft fitted with Premium Economy cabins and other enhancements. The new cabins will also be available on six of its newest A380s.
Avant Garde Technology
While it may not have been the commercial success that Airbus had hoped for, the A380 introduced and operationalised several cutting-edge technologies, which are today deployed on new Airbus aircraft such as the A320neo, A330neo and A350.
Airbus teams used a Digital Mock-Up (DMU) as a 3D representation of an aircraft for the first time on the A380 programme and this was later used with great success on the A350. The A380 also ushered in the era of replacing paper documentation with its electronic library. This allowed flight and maintenance crews to easily locate relevant operational information in the various flight manuals, lists and logbooks, while enabling an optimisation of performance and weight-and-balance computations.
This key A380 innovation is now in widespread use on all new generation aircraft. The A380 also introduced an On-board Airport Navigation System (OANS), which Airbus developed in association with French firm Thales. OANS was developed to provide pilots an overview map of the airport apron and taxiways, as well as the aircraft’s position on that map to help reduce surface navigation errors and prevent runway incursions. It is now deployed on the A320neo, A330neo and A350.
The A380 featured a large degree of commonality in systems, flight deck, procedures, and maintainability with its fly-by-wire A320, A330/A340 and A350 stablemates and this presented an attractive proposition to airlines from a training perspective, since pilots did not require extensive training to transfer from one aircraft type to another.
In fact the A380's sidestick control, a feature first introduced with full fly-by-wire A320, is the same distance from the throttle as on other Airbus passenger aircraft aiding in pilot familiarity in the cockpit. Airbus also used similar systems, control panels and procedures in its passenger cabins across its aircraft products. This not only helped in crew training and familiarity but the high level of interchangeability of systems and parts also streamlined maintenance operations.
To save weight, Airbus introduced the use of new advanced materials such as Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastics (CFRP) and Glare (glass fibres and aluminium) on the A380, which had the added benefit of reducing corrosion and achieving better fatigue resistance. Glare is a laminate incorporating alternating layers of aluminium alloy and glass fibre reinforced adhesive and its properties are optimised by adjusting the number of plies and orientation of the glass tapes.
The A380 also featured the first use of 2H/2E systems architecture on a commercial jetliner. The 5,000 psi pressure hydraulic system made use of two hydraulic and two electric systems, replacing the three hydraulic circuits traditionally used for commercial jetliners. The use of 2H/2E systems architecture delivered significant benefits in weight reduction and system redundancy and safety.
Airborne Behemoth
The A380 was more than 80 m long and 18 m wide with 220 windows and 16 doors. The aircraft’s horizontal stabiliser span (30.4 m), which is located at the rear of the aircraft was almost as large as the span of an A320’s wings (34.9 m). Each A380 comprised of approximately four million individual components with 2.5 mn part numbers produced by 1,500 companies from 30 countries around the world.
An A380 typically seated more than 500 passengers on its twin decks and had a crew of 24. Airbus, however, had certified the aircraft for a max seating capacity of 853 passengers! The aircraft had a maximum weight of 575 tonnes and a range of 15,000 km with 320,000 litres of internal fuel in a standard 4 Class, 545 seat configuration. Take-off speed was 315 kmph and it had a cruise Mach number of M 0.85.
The A380 was available with two engine options in the Engine Alliance GP7200 and Rolls-Royce’s Trent 900, which were both high-bypass ratio engine options. The giant engines (for their time), gulped over one and a quarter tonnes of air every second and all four engines delivered a total of 127,000 kg of take-off thrust, the equivalent of 2,500 cars delivering approximately 110 hp each.