The Airbus A380 is the world’s largest airliner, and although it was a commercial failure, it was used by several flag carriers, including Air France. Air France had a total of ten A380s, first delivered in 2009, and with Paris being one of the world’s largest business hubs and one of the world’s most visited cities by tourists, the enormous double-decker would appear to be a slam dunk. Today, however, Air France doesn’t have a single Airbus A380 in its fleet, and it was the first airline in the world to retire its A380 fleet.
The Airbus A380 was removed from Air France’s fleet during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when air travel was down by over 90%. A thirsty quadjet wth two passenger decks that seated over 500 passengers was the wrong aircraft for the time, and while Air France was the first airline to remove its A380 fleet, it certainly wasn’t the last. However, other carriers like Lufthansa and Qatar Airways have brought back their A380 fleets (mainly due to new aircraft delays), whereas Air France has retired the King of the Skies for good.
Overview Of The Air France A380 Fleet
Air France operated a total of 10 Airbus A380-800s, delivered between 2009 and 2014, according to Planespotters.net. But while Airbus frequently marketed the A380 as a replacement for the Boeing 747-400, this wasn’t the case for Air France. By the 2010s, its 747-400s were in a far denser two-class configuration, and the four-class A380s had more than double the business class seats, along with a first class cabin. The 747s were actually replaced by Boeing 777-300ERs, while the A380 was really serving a new role for the airline.
Air France has three configurations for its Boeing 777-300ERs: a four-class layout, a three-class layout with 48 business class seats that took over most Boeing 747 routes, and a high-density version with only 14 business class seats. As per aeroLOPA, the Airbus A380 came with nine La Première seats, 80 business class seats, 38 premium economy seats, and 389 economy seats, adding up to 516 seats. These planes were meant to supplement the four-class 777-300ER fleet, with significantly more seats in every cabin.
Air France equipped its A380s with the Engine Alliance GP7200 (a hybrid between the General Electric GE90 and the Pratt & Whitney PW4000). Naturally, all aircraft were based at Air France’s hub at 
Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport, and the fleet of ten A380s was comparable to that of Etihad Airways, Qatar Airways, and Korean Air, but smaller than that of Lufthansa, British Airways, Singapore Airlines, Qantas, and Emirates. Air France initially announced in 2019 that it would remove the A380 by 2022, and then retired the aircraft type early during the pandemic.
Difficulty With Filling The Superjumbo
If you examine Air France’s A380 network, you’ll notice that only a handful of routes were consistently operated until the type’s retirement in 2020. These were New York-JFK, Los Angeles, Miami, Mexico City, and Johannesburg. Additionally, Abidjan and Shanghai were operated consistently until 2019. San Francisco was first served in 2011, and then the A380 was removed from the route until 2014, after which it served San Francisco consistently until 2019.
Washington, DC, was only served by the A380 from 2011 to 2012, and the same is true for Montreal and Singapore. Dubai, too, was served from 2011 to 2012, then returned in 2019. The A380 flew to Tokyo-Narita from 2010 to 2014, then was removed from the route. It served Atlanta with the A380 only in 2019. Hong Kong first started receiving Airbus A380s from Air France in 2014, and Air France pulled the superjumbo from the route just three years later in 2017.
What we see here is that Air France couldn’t find places to consistently send these aircraft. Europe is a highly seasonal market for North American tourists, and Air France, like most European airlines, relies heavily on this market. While the A380 works well in moving large volumes of passengers, demand plummets in the winter. Air France had difficulty finding a use for its aircraft during the slow winter season, and couldn’t find many destinations to send them to during the summer season in the Southern Hemisphere.
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Changes In Business Strategy
In the early 2010s, when the Airbus A380 was being delivered, Air France was losing money. Since then, the company has overhauled its business model in several key areas, including a push to become more premium. This was displayed through new cabin investments, but also in network and fleet strategy. It’s La Première first class, for example, was thoroughly upgraded while becoming more exclusive in an attempt to target the ultra-wealthy. Today, the four-class Boeing 777-300ERs only have four La Premiere seats, compared to nine on the A380.
An increased focus was placed on attracting business travelers, evident in reconfigurations featuring larger business class cabins and increased flight frequencies. If we compare the A380 to Air France’s new four-class layout on the Boeing 777-300ER, the 777 has 66% fewer La Premiere seats, 25% fewer business class seats, 16% more premium economy seats, and 48% fewer economy seats. The carrier is going big on business and premium economy, keeping La Première exclusive, and cutting economy capacity.
|
Aircraft |
La Première |
Business Class |
Premium Economy |
Economy |
Total Seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Boeing 777-300ER |
4 |
60 |
44 |
204 |
312 |
|
Airbus A380-800 |
9 |
80 |
38 |
389 |
516 |
The four-class Boeing 777s can be used to destinations with high business and premium demand, such as New York, Los Angeles, Singapore, and Tokyo. But flying an Airbus A380 also means that you have to sell a huge number of economy seats, while the relatively large La Première cabin wouldn’t work with Air France’s vision for this cabin. Economy demand is also far more seasonal than premium demand, and it’s low-yielding in comparison. For the Air France of today, the A380 is the wrong aircraft.
The Expenses Of The Airbus A380
The Airbus A380 comes with four engines, increasing fuel costs compared to a Boeing 777. Although cockpit commonality with other Airbus aircraft decreases training costs, A380 pilots received at least as much money as those on the Boeing 777. Parts and maintenance are expensive for the aircraft, and the GP7200 engines, especially, are extremely costly. With a fleet size of only ten aircraft, this greatly increased the per-aircraft costs of the fleet compared to the Boeing 777 fleet (which numbers 63 aircraft) or the Airbus A350 fleet (currently at 39 planes).
In addition, the A380’s incredible size also increases retrofit costs. In the 2010s, Air France installed a world-class La Première cabin on its Boeing 777-300ERs, along with Safran reverse herringbone seats in business class on the 777s and 787s. But the A380s, despite technically being the airline’s flagship, never received the new seats and flew with the same cabins they were delivered in until the very end. La Première seats had no privacy, while business class was in a six-abreast layout. The premium economy and economy seats are far outdated by today’s standards.
|
Aircraft |
Business Class Seat Model |
Layout |
|---|---|---|
|
Airbus A330-200 |
Stelia Equinox 2D |
2-2-2 |
|
Airbus A350-900 |
Safran Optima Stelia Opera |
1-2-1 |
|
Boeing 777-200ER |
Safran Cirrus |
1-2-1 |
|
Boeing 777-300ER |
Safran Versa Safran Cirrus Safran Optima |
1-2-1 |
|
Boeing 787-9 |
Safran Cirrus |
1-2-1 |
Reportedly, the cost for Air France to retrofit the A380s with modernized interiors would have cost upwards of $50 million per aircraft. These planes and their outdated cabins were bad for Air France’s premium image, while also expensive to maintain and operate. This would be true for any A380 operator, but Air France also had difficulty finding routes to use the jets. Originally, the carrier planned to halve its A380 fleet before announcing the type’s full retirement for 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic was the final nail in the coffin.
The Airbus A380’s Unique Cabin Design That Has Allowed Airlines To Generate More Revenue
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General Problems With The Airbus A380
In Air France’s configuration, the A380 has more seats in every cabin than the Boeing 777-300ER. Air France could have installed a configuration with more premium seats and a smaller economy cabin, but then this would have tanked yields in the lucrative premium cabins. The result was that the aircraft could only fly to destinations with high premium demand and high leisure demand. There are only so many destinations that can support this level of capacity, and it ultimately doesn’t fit with Air France’s current business model.
With only ten aircraft, each aircraft was exceptionally costly to maintain, and on top of that, the A380 is expensive to operate. Due to its engines being half a generation behind those used on the Boeing 787 or Airbus A350, the A380 was relatively fuel-thirsty, and it had four of them. Further hampering its fuel efficiency was the fact that the A380-800 was designed as a shrink, with an enormous wing and heavy fuselage meant to support a stretched variant that ultimately never came.
The A380 was more expensive to operate per seat than even the Boeing 777-300ER in many cases, let alone the Boeing 787 or Airbus A350. It was more expensive to maintain, and it was expensive to update on the inside. It could fly farther than the 777-300ER, but Air France and many other carriers never came close to maxing out the aircraft’s range. The A380 could, of course, seat more passengers, but Air France had trouble filling these planes.
Rundown Of Air France’s Airbus A380 Fleet
The Airbus A380 is beloved by passengers worldwide for its spaciousness, low noise levels, and smooth ride, but the Air France A380 offered perhaps the worst onboard experience of any Air France widebody due to the age of its cabins. The costs of refreshing the interiors were prohibitive, and on top of that, Air France was having other difficulties with the plane.
The A380 was expensive to fly and maintain, and Air France couldn’t fill the plane on most of its network. Air France had already planned to reduce and later retire the fleet. When the COVID-19 pandemic destroyed worldwide travel demand, Air France sought an opportunity to cut these planes early, and today it has no regrets about retiring the Airbus A380.
