The A380, More Than Ten Years On

The A380, More Than Ten Years On

It’s been over ten years since the A380 first started flying commercially. That means a number of maturity milestones are being reached.

Forexample, the first second-hand A380, originally from Singapore Airlines, has now entered service with HiFly - see our story on page 24.

We’re also seeing airports and airlines hold ten year A380 celebrations. In March, London’s Heathrow Airport gave away goodybags and daily VIP experience passes.

The latest ten year celebration comes from Emirates, which is of course the largest operator of the aircraft.

32 | Airline Marketing Monthly - August 2018 Since its first flight to New York from Dubai on 1 August 2008, the Emirates A380 has carried more than 105 million passengers, clocking up more than 1.5 billion kilometres on 115,000 flights, equivalent to 39,000 trips around the globe.

The airline marked the anniversary of that flight to New York through a series of commemorative videos and posts on its social media channels.

Throughout the videos and posts, Emirates charts the different “aviation firsts” the A380 has notched up while in service with the airline.

That includes #HelloJetman - the formation flight in 2015 with the Jetman Dubai duo, conducted over the Dubai skyline and the Palm Jumeirah.

With almost 25 million views on YouTube this was easily one of the most high impact marketing stunts of that year.

Emirates also uses the A380 for a lot of one-off commemorative flights, the most recent being a flight to Islam abad on July 8th.

Even though at ten, the A380 isn’t new, this one-off visit still generated a lot of interest in the Pakistani media, who treated it as a big news event.

For example, Dawn talked about the A380 being welcomed in Islamabad with “pomp and style.”

Indeed, it’s noteworthy how much of a PR asset the A380 still is for Emirates and the other airlines that operate it.

We saw this first hand at the Farnborough Air Show when the HiFly A380 was present on both the public and trade day.

Meanwhile, a post from ‘God Save the Points’ from April, talks about “why the A380 is the most fun for business and first class passengers”, the reasons given being the dedicated boarding doors, on-board showers and on-board cocktail bars. Again, none of these things are new, yet ten years on the enthusiasm is still there.

And that enthusiasm extends to people in the cheap(er) seats as well. For example, see this blog post on “5 reasons why the Airbus A380 is awesome for Backpackers.”

On its part, Airbus, cites research which says that 98% of A380 passengers would recommend the A380 to their friends and family, and 60% would make a special effort to fly on the airplane.

iFlyA380

Airbus has a special dedicated consumer-focused website, which is launched in 2016 to promote the A380. Airbus says that since then, it has seen “millions of visitors.”

Among other the website tries to locate your nearest airport, after which it will allow you to search for and book A380 flights from it.

It will try and do so even if you are located by a regional airport.

For example, iFlyA380 estimated that this writer was near London Southend Airport and suggested a somewhat creative routing to Los Angeles via Rennes and Paris CDG, which would take a grand total of 34 hours.

As well as a booking engine and list of

airlines that operate the A380, the Airbus micro-site includes a blog, which appears to be updated fairly frequently, as well as a “social wall.”

The website is complimented by a mobile app. The iOS app was released in March and has been downloaded 40,000 times, while the Android / Google Play app was released on 25 July.