The largest customer for Airbus’s A380, Emirates Airline has taken delivery of its 50th example of the type at a ceremony in Hamburg.
For the delivery flight, the aircraft was loaded with 40 tonnes of humanitarian supplies which will be warehoused in the UAE.
“Emirates has seen tremendous organic growth in the past four years, probably the fastest of any airline in history,” airline President Sir Tim Clark said in a statement. “We’ve literally added capacity equivalent to what some mid-sized airlines operate, but more significantly, we have maintained high seat loads and profitability. This speaks to the strength of our world-class product, and also our business model which is based on an efficient global hub that connects Dubai to the world, and almost any two cities in the world via Dubai.”
“The A380 has been very successful for us, and this is reflected in the strong customer interest and high seat factors wherever we’ve deployed the aircraft,” he added. “The A380 has helped us serve customer demand on trunk routes, operate more efficiently at slot-constrained airports, and also introduce new concepts on-board that have redefined the flying experience. Moving forward, we will see quite a ramp up in the delivery programme and by late 2017 we will have around 90 A380s in our fleet to support existing and new A380 routes.”
Emirates has 140 A380s in service or on order out of a total of 324 orders for the aircraft, with at least 40 more to be delivered by 2018. The 50th Emirates delivery was the 136th A380 to be delivered since Singapore Airlines received its first example in 2007.
