The A380 renaissance: four brought back into service this year. The ultimate guide to the Superjumbo (2025 edition).

As of January 1, 2026, Australian Qantas' tenth Airbus A380 (the last of those in the fleet that was still parked since the Covid days) will return to service and will allow the carrier to operate daily between Sydney and Dallas with the superjumbo.

The plane had been taken out of service nearly six years ago, on March 22, 2020, at the outbreak of the Covid pandemic globally, and over the years has been parked in Melbourne, Sydney, Victorville, Los Angeles (LAX) and, as of June 21, 2021 in Abu Dhabi.

There, in recent weeks, it was retrofitted in a configuration identical to the other nine A380s available to Qantas, with 14 seats in First Class, 70 seats in Business Class, 60 seats in Premium Economy and 341 seats in Economy.

A story with a happy ending for perhaps the most beloved aircraft among enthusiasts and passengers around the world, which is not even the only one in this 2025, since previously, Emirates-based Etihad had brought as many as three A380s back into service in the current year, one in January and two in May.

The world's largest airplane, which many during and immediately after the Covid pandemic had given up for dead and buried, Is therefore experiencing a new golden age, at least in the homes of those carriers, such as Air France, Thai Airways, malaysia Airlines, and China Southern, who had not gotten rid of it judging it to be too large and too expensive precisely coinciding with the collapse of air traffic resulting from the pandemic.

Six of the ten specimens that were in force at Air France have been scrapped and four are still parked at Tarbes/Lourdes airport in southwest France, but they will never fly again.

Thai Airways instead scrapped one of its six A380s, while the other five make an ugly display on one of Bangkok airport's decentralized aprons.

The six of Malaysia Airlines were all taken out of active service with the eruption of Covid, in 2022 they were transferred to Airbus Financial Services, and today they are parked indefinitely in Tarbes/Lourdes.

China Southern Airlines sold the five aircraft it had in its fleet to Jet Midwest between 2021 and 2022. Four of these are parked in Mojave, California, while one is the one bought by Global Airlines and which Hi Fly has flown half a dozen times between the UK and New York before being parked in Tarbes/Lourdes where it has been since last July without the company giving any definite indication about its future.

Of the fourteen airlines that had purchased the superjumbo, ten have resumed flying it following the post-pandemic demand explosion, although almost all of them missed a few A380s on the way.

Emirates continues to be by far (very far) thehe main user of the double-decker quadriget: of the 116 that are listed in the fleet by the specialized website planespotters.net, 98 are on active duty and 18 are instead listed as 'parked', including five at Dubai World Central and one at Dubai International Airport, while twelve others are under maintenance. Two others are reported to be 'stored' indefinitely at DWC, while five were demolished.

With the three aircraft 'reactivated' during 2025, Etihad has eight A380s in active service today, with one reportedly parked indefinitely at Tarbes/Lourdes. One example had been scrapped in early Covid.

As stated, Qantas also brought back to Sydney a few hours ago the last A380 it had taken out of service to coincide with the start of the pandemic, which nevertheless claimed two lives in March 2020 when two of the 12 superjumbos operating for the kangaroo carrier were scrapped.

The A380 fleet that has suffered the most losses from the virus is that of Singapore Airlines, which between before and after the pandemic saw the number of A380s halved, from 24 to 12.

Eight have been demolished, three are parked indefinitely (two at Alice Springs in Australia and one at Changi), while one is on the force at Hi Fly Malta (but is parked there as well). Of the 12 aircraft still reported to be in the carrier's fleet, 11 are active, while one is reported to be parked in Singapore.

Qatar Airways has eight of the ten examples it had purchased from Airbus in service, while two are parked indefinitely at the old Doha airport, which stands next to Hamad International.

Lufthansa, which had already (almost) said goodbye to the 'double decker,' rushed to bring it back on line when it saw demand spike at the turn of 2022 to 2023 and now has eight of the 14 aircraft in service, while six are reported to be in the charge of Airbus Financial Services and are parked indefinitely in Tarbes/Lourdes.

British Airways, which in the Covid panic had retired all its Boeing 747-400s breaking millions of hearts of passionate fans of the 'queen of the skies,' has instead over the years brought all its A380s back into service.

So did the Korean Asiana, while the 'sister' (as well as owner of Asiana) Korean Air, which had ten superjumbos in the pre-pandemic years, now finds itself with half of its aircraft in active service. One is reported to be parked indefinitely in Seoul, and four have ended up at the wrecker instead.

They fly, all between Tokyo and Hawaii, the three 'flying turtles' by All Nippon Airways (ANA), among the latest examples to come off the Toulouse assembly line and the ones with the nicest livery (but some of Emirates' special liveries are not bad either).

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