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With the coronavirus crisis, Air France-KLM is accelerating the release of the A380. The airline has decided to stop operating the jumbo trainer two and a half years before the scheduled date. "It is an acceleration compared to what was planned. It was a very famous and much appreciated plane, in all the passenger rankings. But it is a large plane very difficult to fill, mainly in winter", explained Thursday on Europe 1 Xavier Tytelman, aeronautical consultant at CGI Consulting.
"This is why he did not find his audience, because it is not profitable enough, except for companies like Emirates which ordered a hundred and which will keep them", has T he continued.
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A plane "that loses money"
Air France-KLM had already explained in July 2019 that, for reasons of profitability of the aircraft, more greedy in kerosene and more polluting than the last generations of long-haul planes, it would stop flying the giant of the air at the end of 2022. "To put it simply, when you have smaller planes, you can put some on the ground and keep others that are sufficiently full. If you have three A330s, you have one on the ground and the other two which continue to be profitable ", takes Xavier Tytelman as an example.
"On the other hand, when you have an A380 on a destination, you cannot go from an airplane to zero. So you are forced to use this airplane which is filled to 60%, and which loses money."
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Airbus strategy is not called into question, however
Other companies, such as Lufthansa, have also brought forward the A380 withdrawal date. For the large aircraft, this commercial failure can be explained by changes in air traffic. "It was a strategic choice which was to connect the major airports, around the 'hubs'. A Toulousain who wanted to go to New York had to go through Paris. From now on we are going towards aeronautics towards direct flights, therefore from Toulouse New York but with smaller planes and easier to fill. We have this positive orientation for the ecology and for the companies, which will be more profitable ", justifies the aeronautical consultant.
But the failure of the A380 does not call into question Airbus' strategy. "Very clearly, the strategic positioning of Airbus is the right one. The A350 is gaining market share in all areas, the A321 XLR (a medium-haul capable of carrying out transatlantic flights) will explode because it is what we will need to make secondary cities internationally. And there are no competitors, Boeing has no equivalents, so Airbus will be the only one able to offer it. In the coming decades, they are probably the ones who will take the advantage over Boeing ", predicts Xavier Tytelman.