Emirates welcomes 50th A380
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Emirates and Airbus have celebrated the delivery of the airline’s 50th A380 aircraft.
The milestone comes just six years after the delivery of Emirates’ first A380 in July 2008, and the arrival of new aircraft will continue in the years to come, with Emirates having a further 140 A380s on order.
“Emirates has seen tremendous organic growth in the past four years, probably the fastest of any airline in history. We’ve literally added capacity equivalent to what some mid-sized airlines operate, but more significantly, we have maintained high seat loads and profitability,” said Sir Tim Clark, president of Emirates.
“The A380 has been very successful for us, and this is reflected in the strong customer interest and high seat factors wherever we’ve deployed the aircraft. The A380 has helped us serve customer demand on trunk routes, operate more efficiently at slot-constrained airports, and also introduce new concepts on-board that have redefined the flying experience.
“Moving forward, we will see quite a ramp up in the delivery programme and by late 2017 we will have around 90 A380s in our fleet to support existing and new A380 routes,” he added.
Emirates is now by far the world’s largest operator of the A380 (Singapore Airlines is second with 19 aircraft), and currently flies the double-decker jets to 27 airports on five continents. By the end of this year, the number of destinations served by an Emirates A380 will increase to 33, with the addition of Kuwait (16 July), Mumbai (21 July), Frankfurt (1 September), Dallas (1 October), San Francisco (1 December) and Houston (3 December).
Emirates operates its A380s in two configurations, offering 489 or 517 seats all in a three-cabin layout.
Emirates 50th A380 also marks the 136th A380 delivered by Airbus, out of a total order book for 324 aircraft.
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