Emirates has moved forward delivery of its last Airbus A380 from June 2022 to this coming November as the Gulf airline reinstates service with the superjumbo to several more routes from now into October as Covid-19 travel restrictions ease. In all, the carrier expects to take three more A380s this year, bringing the final fleet total to 118, Emirates said Wednesday.
“We’ve come to an agreement with Airbus to bring forward the delivery of our remaining A380 orders and have secured financing for these units,” said Emirates president Tim Clark. “These new aircraft will also add more highly sought-after premium economy seats into our inventory, as we prepare to fully launch this cabin product in the coming months.”
Emirates plans to reinstate A380 service over the next two months to Amman, Jordan; Cairo; Dusseldorf, Munich, and Frankfurt, Germany; Guangzhou, China; London (Heathrow); Los Angeles; Manchester, England; Mauritius; Moscow; New York (JFK); Paris; Toronto; Vienna; Washington, D.C.; and Zurich.
The A380’s first and largest operator, Emirates effectively sealed the fate of the superjumbo in February 2019, when it canceled deliveries of 39 airplanes and replaced the order with commitments for 40 A330neos and 30 A350s. Upon that announcement, Airbus said it would halt the assembly of the A380 in 2021 due to a lack of a “substantial” order backlog. Last year, Emirates canceled the last five A380s in Airbus’s order book, hastening the end of the model’s production.