Retired Airbus A380 Returning To The Skies For Mystery Operator?!

I’m not sure what exactly is going on here, but this is sort of intriguing…

Airbus A380 being prepared for return to service

Dresden-based aircraft maintenance company Elbe Flugzeugwerke GmbH has taken to its social channels to share that it has a new customer, and is working on bringing an Airbus A380 back to the skies. As the message reads:

EFW welcomes our new A380 customer.

EFW and our new customer ALG represented by Gregory Thornton and Martyn Anderson are proud to announce the arrival of MSN006, their first A380 to be serviced in Dresden, on behalf of their client.

The aircraft is in a very good condition and we are looking forward to completing the final maintenance tasks before this fascinating aircraft will return to operation.

The plane in question is an 18-year-old jet with the registration code 9H-MIP. The aircraft flew with Singapore Airlines from 2008 until 2018, but the Star Alliance carrier decided not to renew its lease after a decade.

The plane then flew for Hi Fly Malta, a wet lease operator, for a couple of years. This was the first time we ever saw a secondhand A380 enter service. However, the concept of leasing out A380s to other airlines didn’t prove successful, and the plane was ultimately put into long term storage in 2021.

At some point, Global Airlines (lol) was supposed to acquire this plane, but that’s no longer in the cards (the carrier’s sole A380 is now in storage as well, with limited prospects). So we’ve been under the impression that this plane would be scrapped for parts. However, that’s no longer the case, and now the plane is expected to reenter service.

What’s going on with this mystery Airbus A380?

This is purely speculation on my part, but I can’t imagine that any existing A380 operator is looking to acquire one non-standard A380 to add to its fleet, since that’s just more trouble than it’s worth. So which “entrepreneur” is now looking to start something with a single A380?

The announcement includes mention of “new customer ALG represented by Gregory Thornton and Martyn Anderson.” But what’s that company, and who are those people? aeroTELEGRAPH did some digging, and made some interesting discoveries:

• Doric, the German financial institution that most recently owned the plane, reportedly sold the A380 in December 2024
• According to his LinkedIn, Gregory Thornton is head of Airline Leasing Group, which is presumably what “ALG” stands for
• Airline Leasing Group is headquartered in a small house in northeast London, was founded in 2022, and has a share capital of £100, and has four shareholders, with its published purpose being “rental and leasing of equipment for passenger air transport”
• It doesn’t seem that Airline Leasing Group actually intends to operate the plane, but instead, it’s acting as a service provider and intermediary
• In the Malta aircraft registry, this particular A380 is now registered to a company named PB Leasing Aircraft No. 9, and the company’s purpose is the “hire and leasing of equipment for passenger air transport”
• The sole managing director of that company is Roger Allard, a 71-year-old who has been in the tourism industry a long time; most recently, he’s head of the cruise tour operator Hebridean Island Cruises, which primarily operates cruises in Scotland

So… yeah… I’m not sure what exactly is going on here, as this is all very strange:

• Is this supposed to be some charter A380 that’s used as a tie-in with cruises? The concept of any sort of singular charter A380 makes very little sense, but who knows…
• I’m not suggesting that this is the case, but often when aircraft are acquired with questionable arrangements that don’t otherwise make sense, they end up in the fleets of airlines that are sanctioned in the west

We’ll mark this as “developing,” though whatever the plan is, there’s certainly an uphill battle in terms of making the math on this work.

Bottom line

A former Singapore Airlines Airbus A380 that was supposed to be scrapped is now being prepared for reentry into service. The plane has just been flown to Dresden, and will spend the next several weeks being reactivated.

What remains to be seen is what purpose this plane will serve, exactly. The plane isn’t going to Global Airlines, but instead, is reportedly planned for another operator. Will this be some sort of cruise industry charter A380, or what? Not a whole lot makes sense here, which usually makes me suspicious, so we’ll see how this plays out…

What do you make of this A380 reactivation situation?