Surprise. Thai Airways may reignite A380 engines
Just yesterday we reported how China Southern has decided to retire its 5 Airbus A380s. The latest carrier [...]
Thai Airways
Star Alliance
BKK
Just yesterday we told how China Southern has decided to retire its five Airbus A380s. The latest carrier to make such a decision. Among those had said "goodbye" to the jumbos there was also Thai Airways.
In this article:
Thailand's national airline grounded its 747s and A380s with the outbreak of the pandemic, saying no more to the world of four-wheelers.
Where are Thai's A380s
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Those who land in Bangkok at the main airport of the kingdom's capital cannot help but notice the "graveyard of giants" of Thai Airways: In fact, all of the company's jumbos have been parked on the airport's outer runway for more than 30 months.
Things, however, look set to change, and of course we at TFC are only too happy about this.
The reason behind this decision is the same one that forced carriers like Qatar, Lufthansa, British Airways among many to put back into operation the largest passenger plane ever put on the market: The lack of new aircraft and restarting travel.
Speaking at the Assembly of Presidents of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines hosted by Thai Airways in Bangkok, Thailand, the airline's Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) Korakot Chatasingha said the carrier is "closely studying" whether to bring the Airbus A380 back into service. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, Thai Airways had six A380s; today four are on the runway at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK), and the other two are hibernating at U-Tapao International Airport (UTP) in Rayong Pattaya.
Reigniting the engines from hibernation takes time and money, according to Lufthansa it takes no less than 4 months of work for each plane before it can start flying again, which is why the companies consider this possibility very carefully and it is obviously a plan over the medium to long term not a decision that can be made in 10 minutes.
In conclusion
All analysts were wrong during the covid in their predictions for the travel rebound. These analyses prompted the carriers to make difficult but unpostponable choices, such as precisely retiring and decommissioning the largest and most problematic aircraft. Things, however, did not go as planned. And now, among the rDelays in 777x deliveries and problems with materials procurement, carriers find themselves without planes, so here is where the A380, with its 500 seats, once again becomes a key asset.