The world's only airline to operate a secondhand Airbus A380 will be ending its lease for the plane shortly. Hi Fly, which is a Portuguese charter airline that primary wet leases planes to other airlines (meaning Hi Fly provides the plane and crew) has announced that it won't be extending the lease on its Airbus…
Continue reading: Sad: Hi Fly Retiring World’s First Secondhand A380
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Not unexpected at all. I figure it would have made more sense if they had gone for a 650-700-seat Y-heavy configuration (and if corona would have never happened).
They can drop this one now and pick up another one if they want. No shortage of second hand a380s for the next few years.
Too bad, but not surprising. The A380, a marvel of technology, was neither ahead of its time nor necessary in the end. It was a vanity project first and foremost, and has worked for just a small (very small) number of airlines. My prediction is that the A380 will be out of service for good in the next 10 years worldwide, and live on as a freighter. BA and EK will be the last and likely the only 2 airlines to operate the plane before it is fully retired from passenger service.
Agreed, not ' successful' at all by any measure of success.
Not sad for Hi Fly in the slightest; we sat next to one of the senior Hi Fly management on a flight from Malta to Lisbon on Air Malta and he was aggressive and homophobic towards us and tried to humiliate us in front of his colleagues seated in the rows behind us much to their amusement.
I think there is a good business oppurtunity coming out of corona in 2021 and 2022 if you can get an a380 for pennies on the dollar as there will be no shortage on wanting one considering everyone is retiring them if you can get a heavy or all Y config. I think back during 2016 and 2018 during world cup/olympic type events where a lot of people need to get to a specific place that far exceeds capacity. For example i had a LHR to NCE flight back in 2016 booked months in advance and after it was annouce england were to play in Nice the a319 i was supposed to fly on got swapped to a 77W as some 40k brits decended upon the french coast. There are times were capacity needs to go up 10-20x and a a380 can help in those instances but so can other planes that arent as useless 99% of the other time like the a380.
@Wes
Agreed, too bad about the plane.
Not agreed: "alarmist livery?" Half of the Great Barrier Reef has died in the last 35 years. Does your hair need to be on fire before you think there is an issue?
Very ironic, to have 'save the coral reefs' livery on the biggest gas guzzler of them all. Let's address climate change by burning more fossil fuel!
As is typical of the European Aerospace Industry it has an innate inability to build the right size plane for the right size market. Witness the Comet, the Concorde, the VC-10, the Brabazon, the list goes on and on with the A-380 being the icing on the cake. Boeing called it: hub and spoke is dead, point to point is where the future is at! Maybe next time Airbus, or the time after that, or the time after that.
Anthony: boeing business model (or many american companies for that matter) after the 2000s is money first safety later.....