When anyone mentions the A380, you think of Emirates.

This isn’t surprising, of course. Emirates is by far the bigger user of the aircraft and built its entire business model around the double decker, ferrying passengers around the world in bulk via its Dubai hub.

Intriguingly, however, British Airways has quietly crept up the rankings to become the 2nd biggest operator of the A380 despite having just 12 of them.

Cirium published some interesting operational details on the A380 this week which I thought were worth sharing.

As you would expect, given the number of airlines that retired their A380 fleets during the pandemic, A380 flights in total have dropped sharply. There are scheduled to be 5,271 A380 flights this month, compared with 9,764 in November 2019.

The numbers are heading up, as airlines bring their A380 fleets back into action. Flights are up 125% in November 2022 vs November 2021. The low point was June 2020 when, amazingly, only 43 A380 flights took place globally.