Emirates receives its 50th A380 aircraft

Emirates has received its 50th A380 aircraft, strengthening its position as the ‘world’s largest international airline’ by ‘scheduled international passenger kilometres flown’.

Emirates has received its 50th A380 aircraft, strengthening its position as the “world’s largest international airline” by “scheduled international passenger kilometres flown”.

This latest delivery takes Emirates’ all wide-body fleet to 224 aircraft, representing the world’s largest fleet of A380s, and also the world’s largest fleet of Boeing 777s.

After the entry of its 50th A380 aircraft into service by early August, Emirates will offer on a weekly basis a total of 5.7bn available seat kilometres (ASKMs) to some 145 destinations, which span the globe from Los Angeles to Auckland.  

Since April 2010, Emirates has received some 96 aircraft (all A380s and Boeing 777s), increasing its overall capacity by 64% in ATKMs and 71% in ASKMs, while consistently maintaining seat load factors of close to 80%.  

During this period, Emirates also added some 48 cities to its global destination network.

Sir Tim Clark, President, Emirates Airline, said: “Emirates has seen tremendous organic growth in the past 4 years, probably the fastest of any airline in history. We have literally added capacity equivalent to what some mid-sized airlines operate, but more significantly, we have maintained high seat loads and profitability. This speaks to the strength of our world-class product, and also our business model which is based on an efficient global hub that connects Dubai to the world, and almost any two cities in the world via Dubai.

“The A380 has been very successful for us, and this is reflected in the strong customer interest and high seat factors wherever we have 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.”

Airbus Chief Operating Officer (Customers) John Leahy said: “The A380 is pleasing its operators by increasing passenger traffic, strengthening load factors and improving their market share. The delivery of the 50th A380 to Emirates shows the profit enhancing capabilities of this aircraft and the extraordinary vision of Emirates and Sir Tim.”

Emirates has the biggest A380 route network of any commercial airline, currently serving some 27 airports in five continents. Its Dubai-Los Angeles route is the world’s longest A380 flight in operation.

By the end of this year, the number of destinations served by an Emirates A380 will increase to 33, with the addition of Kuwait on July 16, Mumbai on July 21, Frankfurt September 1, Dallas October 1, San Francisco December 1 and Houston December 3.

To date, the airline’s fleet of A380 aircraft has carried 27.5mn revenue passengers, made over 68,800 trips and covered more than 405mn kilometres.

On the ferry flight for Emirates’ 50th A380, the Airbus Foundation and Action For Hunger sent 41 tonnes of cargo consisting of ‘Plumpy Nut’ food bars to support several existing nutrition programmes in the region, mainly in Yemen. The peanut based food bars will be used to feed children five and under, suffering from acute malnutrition.

The cargo will be stored in the United Nation Humanitarian Response facility in Dubai. This will be the single largest humanitarian cargo shipment in the history of Airbus.