There was a festival atmosphere on the runway of Tokyo Narita Airport last Sunday. Thousands of Japanese crowded the airport fence just to see a single, long-awaited aircraft land: the third A380 for All Nippon Airways (ANA). The virus ensured that the last of three A380s for ANA, lost since the beginning of 2020, was standing around at the Hamburg Airbus plant in Finkenwerder on the Elbe and could not be delivered. Her fans were eagerly awaiting her - because “Ka La” (sunset in Hawaiian), as her name is, finally completes the family of flying sea turtles. ANA has painted all A380s brightly colored with turtles, as they only use the giants for Hawaiian traffic.
The colorful exterior serves a good cause, as the marine animals known as "Honu" in Hawaii are acutely threatened. To celebrate the completion of the A380 small family known as the “Flying Honu”, infantile actors in plush turtle costumes in the candy colors of the aircraft paintings danced on the tarmac last week. What the whole thing also showed: the A380 is still popular with travelers and airplane fans - and it is currently experiencing an unexpected comeback around the world that nobody would have dreamed of months ago.
Since vaccination rates have increased worldwide and people who have been vaccinated have been given back more and more freedom to travel, the number of bookings for air travel has skyrocketed.
At the beginning of the autumn break, it was possible to see at German airports, especially at the capital city airport, what chaos the bottlenecks in the infrastructure emaciated by the pandemic are leading to.
Where is our A380 fleet parked?
Above all, the imminent opening of the USA to all vaccinated travelers from November 8th caused online flight bookings to skyrocket by three-digit percentages - British Virgin Atlantic Airways recorded growth of 600 percent compared to the previous year, where almost nothing went.
Suddenly the airlines remember that there is still an A380 fleet somewhere that has actually already been written off and is now perfect for solving acute problems.
A good example is British Airways (BA), which will initially be flying four of its twelve mothballed giants again from November.
And - A380 fans watch out - in November even daily on a morning round trip from London Heathrow to Frankfurt and back.
The comfort of your own business class compartment can be booked there and back at a bargain price from around 260 euros.
With such short distances, BA first has to train enough crews again in order to be able to send the A380 to Los Angeles, Miami and Dubai in winter.