Waking the giant, the return of the Airbus A380.

It is an ill wind that blows no good, or so they say. By all accounts, the winds of history over the past two years have been anything but good. Other than the obvious tragedies and losses, many industries have been decimated, very few more so than the travel and airline industry. With countries and states locked down to various levels around the world, travel has become a far-off memory from another life and time. But a change is being felt and it seems waking the giant is called for. Bring back the Airbus A380.

The Airbus A380-800 also known as the Super Jumbo is an Airbus answer to the Boeing 747. Carrying 555 passengers in a 3-class configuration, was it too late to market?

Covid vaccinations started off slowly in many countries with mixed messaging, misinformation and scarcity of vaccines in some cases holding back the rollout. In Australia for example the rollout was hampered by distrust of one type and scarcity of other types, but that is now in the past.

New freedoms in some states of the country are promising to bring back some sort of normality as a reward for passing specific milestones of the percentage of the population being fully vaccinated. The game-changer is that if travellers go overseas and are fully vaccinated, they do not have to do hotel quarantine on return home. QANTAS CEO, Alan Joyce, said this makes international travel possible again.

The opening up of international travel routes will be a gradual affair. With varying levels of covid containment in different countries, new agreements will have to be made between those countries.

For example, the return of Australians to the popular holiday isle of Bali will be dependent on agreements that can be thrashed out between Australia and Indonesia on what rules and conditions will govern who can come to Bali and what procedures they need to follow. If, for example, the Indonesian government requires arriving travellers to quarantine for any significant time on arrival, it is pretty much a non-starter.

Singapore was the launch customer for the A380 back in October 2007.

So why does it mean a reawakening of the giant, the Airbus A380? Well, we used to be able to fly all over the place, pretty much. Now, however, we will have for the near future a more limited amount of places we can fly to. To that limited amount of places, we have a large portion of the population who is busting a gut to get their butt on a plane seat.

Missed family, friends, events or just to get the hell out and see something different. The point is, we will have many people going to similar destinations, therefore, more seats are required. The Airbus A380 is the biggest there is, so is perfect for the job.

QANTAS for its part has its twelve Airbus A380s parked at Southern California Logistics Airport (VCV) in the Mojave Desert. This location was chosen over the more local Alice Springs where airlines like Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines have chosen to store their aircraft because it is drier.

The earlier-than-expected restart of international travel has sparked a lot of activity and excitement. To reawaken an aircraft from its slumber takes thousands of man-hours and is already underway. We believe we may see the first of two QANTAS A380s back in Australia on Christmas day. Two aircraft will return initially and be used on short routes to enable the retraining of personnel.

The plan is to use these two initial aircraft on the Sydney to Los Angeles route. This route is some 7,500 miles in length with an eastbound travel time of 13 hours and 45 minutes and a westbound of 15 hours. This means that two aircraft are required to maintain the schedule which begins on 27 March 2022 and is currently showing as:

QF11 Sydney to Los Angeles departing 10:15 AM and arriving 6:00 AM
QF12 Los Angeles to Sydney departing 9:55 PM and arriving 6:55 AM (+2 days)

Three more A380s are due to arrive back in Australia in November 2022 and are slated to operate on the Sydney to London via Singapore route. Five more are due back in early 2024, leaving two which may well be scrapped.

Singapore Airlines, the launch airline for the Airbus A380, announced a few days ago that it will bring the A380 back into its fleet on 18 November 2021. The aircraft will operate as SQ317 from Changi to Heathrow. For a month from 04 November to 01 December, the A380 will operate crew training flights between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

From 01 December an A380 will be put on the Singapore to Sydney run to add to the Christmas seat availability.

A380 on approach to Heathrow Airport.

Earlier this month British Airways also announced it was bringing back some of its A380s to be used on the Miami, Dubai and Los Angeles routes. It also has intentions of running short-haul training flights initially to Madrid and Frankfurt, so there may be opportunities for planespotters who would not normally see those aircraft in their home airport.

Qatar Airways will also bring back five of its A380s in November to service routes to London, Heathrow and Paris, Charles de Gaul. CEO Akbar Al-Baker said it was not for the love of the aircraft as he has indicated in the past that buying the A380 was the airline's biggest mistake. There is even a possibility of all ten of their A380 fleet coming back online to fill in the gap left by their A350s grounded by a fuselage skin problem.

Airbus A380-841 Malaysia Airlines.

What of Emirates? By far the largest operator of the type. Well, they have still been flying A380 through the pandemic, but at half-strength. That means around forty-three have been in service while seventy-seven have been stored. Emirates says they will bring more back into service before the end of the year.

So an ill wind it may be, but for the Airbus A380, this ill wind may well mean that it gets a few more years of useful life before disappearing into history.

How do you feel about the A380 coming back? Are you happy about it, do you like travelling on it? Are you lining up for those first seats?

Safe travels everyone.

Is this finally the end of the Boeing 747 Jumbo?

Just over 50 years ago on 09 February 1969, Boeing made history as the world's largest jet airliner, the Boeing 747 named City of Everett, climbed off the new purpose-built runway into Seattle's grey sky. Thus began our love affair with what was to be dubbed the Jumbo Jet.

US carrier Pan Am was the launch customer for the Jumbo and scheduled their first service from New York to London for 7:00 pm on 21 January 1970. The service was to be flown by an aircraft named Clipper Young America. On departure from the terminal in New York, however, there were technical difficulties around one of the engines overheating. The aircraft returned to the terminal and a replacement aircraft was flown in. The replacement 747 which was called Clipper Victor, was substituted and renamed Clipper Young America. The first commercial service of the 747 Jumbo departed New York finally at 1:52 am on 22 January.

Pan Am under the stewardship of Juan Trippe was a force to be reckoned with during that time and their need for a larger aircraft than the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 was a driving force in the eventual design outcome of the 747. Boeing was not completely convinced that a passenger aircraft of this size had a market. To this end, they created a design that would work well for freight airlines, which is where they saw the biggest market potential. This is of course why we have the distinctive bubble on top of the fuselage where the flight deck is located. The bubble enabled the 747 to be produced with a nose door for loading cargo with clear access to the fuselage unencumbered by a flight deck blocking the access. This may well have been a stroke of genius as we now see Boeing still producing the 747-8F, the freighter version.

Including the current 747-8, there have been 1,555 Boeing 747s delivered since that historic flight back in 1969. The 747, "Queen of the Skies", changed the world of travel and became the symbol of air travel. Appearing in songs and movies and just generally winning our hearts, the 747 has been a favourite for many years.

KLM Boeing 747-400 departing from Amsterdam. KLM has been retiring their 747s and don't anticipate the type to ever fly again under a KLM tail.

50 years is a long time in technology. Of course, the various models of the 747 have all come out with improvements and technology updates, but other technologies have also improved and eclipsed the need for a very large four-engined airliner.

Whilst Boeing is seeing a tapering off in interest in the passenger Jumbo, they at least still have the cargo version which has around 17 outstanding air-frames still to be delivered. Spare a thought for Airbus and the Airbus A380. You could say they came a little late to the Jumbo, or Super Jumbo party. By the time the first A380s were being delivered, the aviation scene was already changing, with newer technology large twin-engine airliners such as the Boeing 777, Boeing 787, Airbus A330, and Airbus A350 taking on long haul services. ETOPS certifications enabled these giant twins to fly the routes previously reserved for the 4 engined giants. The writing was on the wall.

Lufthansa Boeing 747-8 (D-ABYU) at Frankfurt Airport. Lufthansa was the launch customer for the Boeing 747-8i (International) and currently have not announced plans to retire these newer aircraft.

These changes were already well underway before the current economic market created by Covid-19 took its toll on travel. Airlines that still carried the Boeing 747 in their fleets already had firm plans in place to retire the type in the very near future. This, in many cases, was projected to happen over the first years of the 2020s, however, the effects of Covid-19 on global travel have prompted these airlines to bring forward their 747 retirement plans.

For example, Virgin Atlantic will be retiring its 7 747s very shortly. Consider that its 747 fleet has an average age of 20 years, whereas the rest of its fleet, excluding these 747s, has an average age of 9 years. This represents a significantly higher cost in maintenance for aging older technology aircraft. Lufthansa has also brought forward the retirement of 5 of its 13 Boeing 747-400s. It is worth noting that Lufthansa is one of the few airlines that bought the newer Boeing 747-8i. At the time of writing, this aircraft would still be retained by the airline. British Airways which has a large fleet of 28 747s will be working toward complete retirement of the type by 2024.

British Airways have 28 Boeing 747-400s in its fleet and are working toward retiring them all by 2024.

QANTAS for its part was looking to retire its last 6 747s by the end of 2020. The current travel climate has caused them to re-evaluate that schedule. Of the 6 mentioned, 3 have now already made their way to the aircraft graveyard in the Mojave Desert, California. The remaining 3 were scheduled to operate routes to Johannesburg, Tokyo, and Santiago until the end of 2020. It is now widely believed that the remaining 3 will follow their sisters to Mojave this month, June 2020. Foreward QANTAS schedules show that the aforementioned routes will now be flown by the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. The "Flying Kangaroo" on a 747 tail, once a very common site will be no more. By the end of the year, the only place you will be able to see a QANTAS 747 will be at HARS(Historical Aircraft Restoration Society) at Shellharbour Airport, just south of Sydney. Well worth a visit.

QANTAS Boeing 747-438. Once such a common site in our skies, soon to be no more.

I know I've had some of my most epic and memorable flights on the 747. Down the back or up the front is always a wonderful experience. Whether it be a brand new 747-200B of Air New Zealand or a really tired old QANTAS 747-400, you always felt like you were on a real airliner, the grand old Queen of the Skies. I know I will miss seeing them and being able to get on one.

Do you have any special memories of 747 flights you have taken? Feel free to share them below.