Why are Airbus A380 and Boeing 747 going to the boneyard?
Since mid-March, most have barely flown except on short hops to maintain pilots’ certifications and valedictory voyages to gather dust in desert boneyards. Many of those furloughs look like becoming permanent. British Airways, which until now retained the world's largest fleet of 747-400s, has grounded all 31 of them for good. Qantas has bid farewell to its last 747 and has already suspended its stable of A380s.
Among the 15 operators of the A380, which entered service less than 13 years ago, only Emirates has been operating flights in anything close to a normal fashion, according to data from aircraft-tracking site Flightradar24. Out of its 115 such planes – about half the global fleet – just a dozen have been flying to and from Europe over the past month or so, as limited traffic has trickled back. China Southern Airlines has also been running a limited service with its five A380s.
However, the vast majority of the planes – worth some $50 billion, if valued at about half of their list prices – have been stuck on the tarmac, possibly permanently. Qatar Airways has speculated that its A380s may never return, while Lufthansa has made similar noises. By the time the long-haul routes for which the A380 was designed return to normal in 2024 or so, about half the fleet will be at least a decade old and well on the way toward retirement.
Singapore Airlines, the biggest A380 operator after Emirates, said in first-quarter results that it may write down “older generation aircraft” such as its A380s by around US$1 billion.
It’s a similar picture with the 747. Of the 29 planes operated by Lufthansa – the largest passenger fleet, once British Airways’ jets have retired – just four have remained in regular operation since March, with a further four gradually returning to service over the past two months.
Probably the most active operator of passenger 747s at this point is Aeroflot, plus a handful of charter operators that run seasonal flights to holiday destinations and pilgrimage services to Saudi Arabia. Even there, though, foreign pilgrims at this year’s hajj will be confined to 10,000 people already in the country. The reasons for the decline of these jets aren’t hard to discern.
Even at the best of times, it can be challenging to fill more than 400 seats at a time, and a plane with more than 20% of seats empty will typically lose money – and that’s before you start thinking about the costs of providing crew and destination accommodation for such vast aircraft.
With the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 able to achieve similar ranges using just two engines and smaller cabins, the economics of double-decker planes no longer make a lot of sense. U.S. airlines in particular have long since given up on the jumbo. They never bought a single A380, and last took delivery of a 747 a few months after the September 11, 2001, attacks, when Northwest Airlines bought two before later going bankrupt and being taken over by Delta Air Lines.
