posted on Jun, 11 2018 @ 06:33 AM
a reply to:
Sammamishman
As far as I am aware the only customer who has publicly stated that they wish to offload their 380's has been MAS. But then they have never had a
great reputation for fleet management, and I was aware more than 12 months before it was public that they just didn't get the aircraft and were
looking to sell or lease the fleet. It would appear they believed the early sales pitches from Airbus and woefully under resourced themselves. As I
said I was aware long before it hit the papers that they had problems with a MAS engineer informing me that they only trained up 2 licensed guys to
deal with a fleet of 6 aircraft, that's just ludicrous but ball park in line with early projections we based our workforce off. It seems that the EK
along with later adopters of the 380 ignored those fake sales pitches and used the experience of early adopting airlines like SIA etc. Point of fact,
BA and Willie Walsh have on numerous occasions stated they are very happy with the aircraft (as has Tim Clark and other operators) and would happily
take more for both BA and the wider IAG fleet if Airbus would drop the high price tag. Talking with BA engineers I find that to be echoed at ground
level too.
I make no secret that I am in favour of the aircraft, I was initially hostile towards it, then skeptical, followed by grudging respect. However I
would now say I am a moderate fan of it. It has flaws, some of them deep ones, but when you run it right as some airlines do it works. I honestly
believe its major three problems are no real freight capacity/dedicated freighter, a negative image borne out of some airlines just not getting it and
its at least 10 years too early. Yes it most definitely was an ego project, but there is a place for it, just not in the kind of numbers the 747 was
in its heyday of the early to mid 90's.
Zaph, I understand your point that a number of recycler's are not interested in it, but it may also be that with no experience of trading in its
spares and with a relatively small fleet it wasn't seen as worth gearing up for it. There is certainly no end of demand for A-380 components I am
forever dealing with it, particularly when you see some of the ridiculous lead times for critical spares from Airbus and it isn't just us, Emirates
guys have complained that even as the largest operator they constantly have aircraft sitting on the fence awaiting parts. There seems to be a very
laissez-faire attitude to helping out customers with it, which is somewhat of a French "Gallic shrug" phenomena it seems.
All up 10 years after the first one is broken up I predict that there will be a renewed interest in the 380 from ever constrained airport slots.
Whether the aircraft survives long enough in production to warrant demand for a NEO second coming or not remains to be seen.