Airbus’ A380 is making its mark on the world’s busiest hubs – opening up new opportunities for these airports, as well as their passengers and airlines – with the aircraft’s unmatched spaciousness, efficiency and comfort.
Currently operating at some 50 destinations, the double-deck, 544-seat-capacity A380 is helping airports across the globe boost capacity, attract more passengers, increase revenue, free up slots at their gates, and reduce landing fees – benefits for both airlines and travellers.
Attracting passengers and generating more revenue
Capacity-constrained major international travel hubs such as London’s Heathrow and Hong Kong International Airport operate many scheduled A380 flights daily, and have seen the enormous benefits of Airbus’ 21st century flagship jetliner.
“The A380 has helped us to grow the number of passengers using Heathrow to around 75 million people last year,” said John Holland-Kaye, Chief Executive Officer of Heathrow Airport. “It’s the largest plane in the world, it helps us serve more passengers on very busy routes out of Heathrow and it also frees up slots to serve new routes in North America, South America and Asia that we would not otherwise be able to serve.”
From the busiest airports to emerging markets
Another example of the A380’s success is at Hong Kong International Airport – Asia’s busiest hub, which has had more than 5,000 A380 services to date. Fred Lam, Hong Kong International Airport’s CEO, said Airbus’ double-deck aircraft is a true passenger magnet and Hong Kong International Airport is incentivizing airlines to operate bigger aircraft.
“We are almost reaching capacity,” Lam said. “One of the ways we feel we can continue to have passenger growth is to use our charging mechanism to encourage the airlines to switch to bigger aircraft so that with a similar number of slots they would be able to bring more passengers to our airport in the future, and make it cheaper per passenger.”
In addition to the world’s busiest airports, fast-developing air transportation markets are also positioned to benefit from the A380. Airbus’ Executive Vice President of Marketing and Strategy Kiran Rao cites the example of India, with an emerging middle class that is expected to exceed 400 million people in the coming years. “The only way to move all those passengers around is on a large aircraft and you have to do so with economic efficiency and with comfort, and the A380 is the solution.”
Airbus press release
