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Europe’s A380 Fleet Shrinks By 46% As Air France And Lufthansa Retire More Aircraft During Coronavirus

This article is more than 3 years old.

Almost half of Europe’s A380s will be retired at the end of COVID-19. Air France is withdrawing all of its A380s while Lufthansa is increasing its A380 retirements.

The exits bring Europe’s A380 fleet from 37 to 20, a decrease of 46%.

British Airways so far plans to keep its A380 fleet static at 12. Portuguese charter operator Hi Fly has one A380.

Europe’s A380 retirements began before COVID-19. Lufthansa was the first to plan withdrawals, announcing last year it would retire six A380s in 2022. Those six retirements were brought forward in April.

Lufthansa this week said it is retiring one more A380, halving its original A380 fleet from 14 to seven.

Air France last year decided to retire three A380s and its remaining seven by 2022. One A380 has already been withdrawn under the original plan. The other A380s are parked and now will not return to service.

Since passenger traffic will take a few years to recover, there is a small or even non-existent window for the Air France A380s to be used for a few months before their 2022 retirement.

Withdrawing the A380s immediately allows Air France to redeploy pilots and save on storage costs. It is more expensive to put an aircraft into temporary storage than long-term parking.

Air France-KLM expects it could end 2020 with 80% of normal capacity. Returning to 2019 traffic levels may take until 2023.

The original 10 A380s at Air France comprised five owned aircraft and five on operating lease. The initial retirement plan called for Air France not to renew the leases on three of its A380s.

Lufthansa owns all 14 of its A380s, consistent with it having a mostly owned fleet.

Outside of Europe, Qantas has grounded its A380s and may not return all of them to service. Malaysia Airlines previously removed its A380s from regular service.

Emirates, the largest A380 operator by far, is studying options to reduce its A380 fleet, potentially by upwards of 50 aircraft.

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