Wingless birds

Picture: Emirates

If there is one thing that I have mixed feelings for as a result of the pandemic, it’s that it has severely curtailed travel. There are reminders everywhere: friends posting pictures from parts of the world not in lockdown and Facebook's own ever-helpful reminder facility of fun times gone by. The other day we got a glimpse on television of Palma in Mallorca, the last time either of us were on foreign soil or travelled anywhere by plane. And that was October 2019.

I can’t complain, though. By the time I left my previous job, a month before that trip, I’d taken 52 flights in as many weeks, a ridiculous and unsustainable amount of air travel. As my various frequent flier memberships attest, I’ve experienced my fair share of work and leisure travel over the last three decades, not least of which the 17 years I lived abroad. During that time, too, I got to fly on most types of airliner, nerdishly satisfying my childhood planespotting hobby from the inside out. Even during that last 12 months of intense air travel for work, I never failed to get a little excited boarding a Boeing 747, or one of the brand-spanking new Airbus A350s, and was in a constant dilemma over whether it truly is better to travel than to arrive.

Picture: British Airways

My first flight on the Airbus A380 ‘superjumbo’ came on my birthday in 2011. My friend was playing a gig in New York, and being 11/11/11, I thought I’d treat myself to a birthday weekend away. Turning up at the gate at Paris Charles de Gaulle, I was confronted by the bulbous prow of the 380 - a plane I’d previously only seen from the ground at the Farnborough Airshow. With the 747 the first jumbo I’d ever flown on, on my first ever trip to the US, it was genuinely exciting to be boarding only the second type of passenger plane of that size to enter mainstream airline service. To satisfy my own geekdom, the giant double-decker had innovations such as cameras in the tail and underside that allowed you to see where you were going on the seatback screens, a feature I found addictive as we taxied to the departure runway and, before you knew it, this lumbering giant lifted off, gracefully and physics-defyingly, with hardly any sense of acceleration. I hardly watched anything else on that screen for the duration of the flight, even if the vista was mostly cloud.

I would go on to travel several more times on the A380, with Air France again, British Airways and Emirates, to places like Miami, Los Angeles and Dubai, each flight as comfortable and uncomplicated as any I’d ever had. Which is why I’m genuinely sad to see that the type is already for the knacker’s yard. 

Just as COVID-19 has brought about the end of the delightful 747, most recently for BA and Virgin Atlantic, who retired theirs this year, the pandemic has hit the airlines’ fleets of other big jets, with the A380 faring worst. 

More than 90% of the four-engined planes have been grounded since the coronavirus curtailed international air travel, and it now seems like many will never take off again. Research by aviation data specialists Cirium suggests that 380s - along with older A340s and some Boeing 777s - are being retired “sooner than expected”. 

Even though the 380 was only introduced in 2005, and most airliners remain in mainstream service for up to 30 years, it has always proven to be a challenging aircraft to fill. In some configurations it can seat up to 800 passengers, although no airline has actually taken up that option. The biggest problem for the A380 - even before the pandemic struck - is that gas-guzzling four-engined aircraft have become unfashionable, especially with long-distance travel now covered, perfectly safely, by super-fuel-efficient twinjets like the Boeing 787 DreamLiner and A350. 

Picture: Emirates

Still, though, airlines invested in them, most notably Emirates who married the plane to their strategy of making Dubai its global operations hub. The airline even put great store behind attracting premium customers, with enhanced first and business class cabins that included better in-flight WiFi than that on the economy deck, and even suites with their own showers.

As of today, the airline has 112 of the type in service, almost half the total built, but has effectively brought the aircraft’s production to an end by announcing that it would not be taking up the final 11 of its 123-plane order. The last 380 will roll off the Airbus production line next year. According to Cirium’s 2020 Airline Insights Review, as of this month, only 21 A380s were in service, with some 219 in storage, some indefinitely while others might end up being covered into freighters. Air France - with whom I made my 380 debut - has already withdrawn its fleet permanently, with Lufthansa and others planning for a near future without them. 

There are two key factors at work here: firstly, the 380 has been a victim of its own short history. By the time Airbus got it off the ground, industrial advances in more fuel-efficient airframe and engine technologies were already producing new marques that were instantly appealing to cost-conscious airline CFOs. The 380, like the 747, quickly became an icon, and much loved by those who flew on it (and who flew it). But it was something of an anachronism, even by the time it first took off. Sadly, its withdrawal so soon after COVID brought about the demise of the 747, has become inevitable. 

The second factor is, clearly, a pandemic that has decimated air travel. Some predictions suggest that it won’t be until the middle of this decade before the industry returns to anything like it was before the virus broke out. As we saw in the wake of SARS and 9/11, air travel will return, once the majority of passengers feel it safe to do so (though that hasn’t stopped others…), but it raises the question as to how it will return. 

All I know is that we can’t stay cooped up forever, and this time of year - with TV ads for holidays and the Sunday supplements doing their best to tempt you to places you could go, the desire to get on a plane and go somewhere will only grow stronger. It’s just unlikely that you’ll be doing it on one of the most distinctive and comfortable airliners I’ve ever flown on. #sadface

Picture: British Airways