As government-imposed travel restrictions put air travel to a halt, airlines scrambled to find storage space on where to store aircraft that are temporarily not needed anymore. Lufthansa (LHAB) (LHA) , which indicated that it would retire some portion of its Airbus A380 fleet, shipped one Super Jumbo to storage in Teruel, Spain (TEV).
On April 28, 2020, the Frankfurt, Germany-based airline shipped its first Airbus A380 to Teruel Airport (TEV) in Spain in order to store it. Teruel Airport is home to Tarmac Aerosave, a company that specializes in aircraft maintenance processes and is one of the few companies that are certified to work on the Airbus A380 double-decker.
The Super Jumbo registered D-AIMG, flew in from Munich Airport (MUC). Flight LH9924 from MUC to TEV took two hours and two minutes, flight tracking website data shows. The airline’s other A380s are currently sitting in its two main German hubs, namely Frankfurt Airport (FRA) and Munich Airport (MUC).
The German airline operated 14 Airbus A380 aircraft prior to almost complete stoppage of international air travel. As the pandemic developed, however, Lufthansa (LHAB) (LHA) indicated that it would retire six A380s, seven Airbus A340-600 and five Boeing 747-400 aircraft in order to reduce its operating costs.