Another pair of Airbus A380 superjumbos that had been in long-term storage in Spain since the pandemic has left that country as their respective airline owners look to press them back into regular commercial passenger service.
The two aircraft involved, belonging to Abu Dhabi-based Etihad and Germany’s Lufthansa departed Teruel Airport (TEV) in Spain on September 13, 2024, where they have been stored since March 2020 and May 2020 respectively. Both aircraft are understood to be required by their airlines due to the upsurge in travel demand plus the opening of new routes planned to commence in 2025.
The Etihad example, registered A6-APE, was the fifth of ten of the type delivered to the airline and entered service in October 2015. It is 9.6 years old and joins the carrier’s other four A380s that have already returned to service on the company’s flagship routes to London-Heathrow (LHR) and New York-JFK (JFK) from Abu Dhabi’s Zayed International Airport (AUH).
The aircraft departed Teruel at 14:30 local time on September 13, 2024, and headed on its six-hour flight ‘home’ to Abu Dhabi where it will undergo post-storage maintenance and reentry-into-service checks. The ferry flight was the aircraft’s first venture into the air since it had arrived in Spain over four years ago.
Etihad intends to bring back more of its stored A380s into service as demand continues to rise. The carrier recently announced that it will introduce the A380 on some of its routes to India from Abu Dhabi.
Meanwhile, the Lufthansa example, registered D-AIMA, was the carrier’s first A380 and was delivered to the airline in May 2010, making it just over 14 years old. The airline has a fleet of eight A380s in total, of which six have already returned to service with the last two now out of storage and undergoing maintenance checks before re-entering service.
D-AIMA departed Teruel at 16:33 on the same day as its Etihad counterpart and arrived in Frankfurt at 18:44, just over two hours later. However, its homecoming in Germany was to prove to be short-lived. At 06:07 on September 15, 2024, the aircraft was airborne once again, as it headed eastwards to Manila in the Philippines as LH9922 to undergo heavy maintenance checks there.
Both aircraft are expected to rejoin the active fleets of their respective carriers before the end of 2024. According to data from ch-aviation, there are now 151 A380s in active service, while 78 remain stored, have been retired, or are undergoing maintenance, a figure which includes these two examples.