Five months after Airbus inaugurated its newly completed, comprehensive hangar – designed to handle the final assembly line for the A220 commercial aircraft – in Mobile, Alabama, the major aircraft manufacturer officially delivered its first-ever U.S. built A220 to Delta. potentially paving the pathway for evolving its production capabilities and presence in the U.S. market. “Handing over the first U.S-assembled aircraft to a U.S.-based customer is a real point of pride for the A220 program,” Philippe Balducchi, leading the A220…
The summer has passed and the prospects for the aviation industry's recovery are once again exhausted. The high season ends and, except for some signs of recovery in demand that was seen in July and August, the market again shows the impact of COVID-19 on European aviation. For that reason,…
Qatar Airways has decided to keep its fleet of 10 Airbus A380s grounded, citing the aircraft's vast commercial and environmental footprint. “Due to COVID-19’s impact on travel demand, the airline has taken the decision to ground its fleet of Airbus A380s as it is not commercially or environmentally justifiable to…
Singapore Airlines has sent six of its 19 Airbus A380 aircraft to the Asia Pacific Aircraft Storage (ASPA) located at Alice Springs, Australia for long-term storage. The airline aims at preserving its super-jumbos from Singapore’s high humidity environment, which poses corrosion risk for the aircraft. The climate of Alice Springs…
This week we faced some sad news. It was slipped to us right before the start of the holiday weekend and it didn’t get much attention outside of the aviation community, but for us, the news hit home hard. It wasn’t anything we weren’t expecting. We knew it was coming,…
Hit hard by the collapse of air traffic due to ongoing pandemic, Air France abruptly had to retire its entire A380 fleet in May. The aircraft will take to the skies for the last time with the Air France livery on Friday, eleven years after it entered service at the…
The iconic double-decker will take to the skies with flights to London and Paris starting from July 15 as announced by the airline on Tuesday. The airline, which has been forced to ground all superjumbos in its fleet due to the effects of the novel coronavirus pandemic, will operate the…
A spokesperson from Airbus told AirlineGeeks in an email on Thursday that there are five A380 aircraft that are in the assembly phase in Toulouse, including the last double-decker to be built. “Regarding production, we still have eight aircraft in the production process including the MSN 272 parts of which…
Emirates Airbus A380 A6-EDB, which joined the Emirates fleet on Oct. 24, 2008, six months after its first test flight, has been retired from the airline’s fleet. The aircraft, which hasn’t performed a revenue flight in four months, was spotted in an all-white livery at Dubai International Airport. A6-EDB made…
Air France has announced it will immediately retire its Airbus A380 fleet following the impact of the COVID-19 crisis. The airline was due to retire nine A380s from its fleet by 2022, however, the French flag carrier has brought this date forward. In a statement, the airline said: "In the…
