Lufthansa’s A380 Re-Premieres After Three-Year Break at Munich Airport

After a compulsory three-year break, Lufthansa’s A380 celebrated a re-premiere. We were there and present the concept behind it.

Airport – That’s a culture of mistakes: With brass band music, gingerbread hearts and a lot of media fanfare, Lufthansa reversed its decision at Munich Airport a little more than three years ago to literally send the Airbus A380, the largest passenger aircraft in the world, into the desert. The quasi-undead is flying again – first one, by the end of 2024 there will even be six.

It was probably not even a mistake when Lufthansa decided in 2020 not to use the A380 anymore. Corona prevailed – and emptiness in the sky. During the lockdown, nobody could really imagine that air traffic would recover in the foreseeable future. So Lufthansa literally sent the giant aircraft into the desert, specifically in the Spanish desert near Teruel, and that in “deep storage” – not just temporarily, but in a coma.

It’s hot and dry in the desert – a good preservative. But even in Teruel, one is not immune to inclement weather. And so a hailstorm swept over the Airbusse XXL – and left behind what many drivers have already had to get to know: nothing but small dents in the sheet metal.

In 2022 Corona lost its terror and air traffic recovered faster than airport and airline managers could ever have dreamed of. The consequences are well known: last year’s chaos travel summer with mountains of stranded suitcases.

The Munich Lufthansa governor Stefan Kreuzpaintner and his chief pilot Karl Hermann Brandes had to increase the capacities again.

But that was not the case with any adjustment screw, not even with the A 380. It had to be “woken up” in Teruel for two weeks, i.e. made ready to fly. Then it was off to the shipyard in Frankfurt for 30 days and finally to Manila for a two-month check. And that at a time when one only hoped to really get the giant plane full again.

On April 12, the “D-AIMK”, which had been delivered to Lufthansa in 2014, arrived at the Erdinger Moos. She then had her premiere again on Thursday – in 8:15 hours to Boston in the USA. Alongside New York, this is the only Munich A380 destination in the summer timetable. Los Angeles and Bangkok are then served in winter. The second A380 required for this is expected in the second week of June, numbers three and four in July and October and machines five and six next year.

But Lufthansa does not want to guarantee eternal life for the A380. “For the time being, we are planning until 2027,” explains Brandes in an interview with our newspaper. For the massive capacity of 509 seats – Brandes: “One A380 replaces two smaller long-haul aircraft” – speak “that there are bottlenecks in take-off and landing rights at more and more airports, which strengthens the trend towards large aircraft”. On the other hand, Lufthansa has ordered a number of A350-1000, also large, but above all economical and quiet intercontinental jets.

If the A380 remains in the fleet beyond 2027, it would have to be completely rebuilt inside – according to the new “Allegris” concept of the crane line with more first and business class seats and new chairs. “It costs a lot of money,” says Brandes. But for the time being there is a party mood. You can be wrong. . . ham