KUALA LUMPUR: As per a report, Malaysia Airlines’ CEO has confirmed that the airline plans to retire their Airbus A380 fleet.
“We are cognizant of the challenges to sell this aeroplane, but we are still looking at ways and means to dispose of our 380 fleet. At the moment, the management is convinced that the 380 doesn’t fit the future plan” said Izham Ismail, Malaysia Airlines CEO.
Malaysia Airlines took delivery of their first of 6 A380’s in 2012, the last of which arrived in 2013 and was the 100th A380 produced. Malaysia Airlines A380 features 8 First Class Suites (later re-branded as Business Suite), 66 Business Class angle flat seats and 420 Economy Class seats, spread across both decks.
Since the arrival of A350 into the Malaysia Airlines fleet, the smaller twin Airbus has been slowly replacing the A380 between London and Kuala Lumpur; this has left the A380 doing adhoc high demand flights to Seoul, Tokyo, Madinah and Jeddah.
The pandemic has caused the acceleration of Airbus A380 retirements. Air France, Etihad Airways, Lufthansa, Qatar Airways and Thai Airways are all planning to retire their A380 fleets.
“There is no future for the A380. It was the wrong airplane at the wrong time. It is something that passengers love, many liked to travel on the A380. It’s very quiet and it’s very spacious, but at the end of the day, for the operator, it’s really painful to keep them in the skies. The operating costs are punishing and so are the maintenance costs, an A380 at C check is three times the cost of that of a B777 or an A350-1000.”
