Jim Armitage: Why the A380 will be a white elephant

In my lifetime, the boffins of engineering have created three commercial aeroplanes that captured the world’s imagination.

Concorde, launched in 1976, was the sleek, Mach 2 miracle for the super-rich. The 747 Jumbo Jet took to the skies in 1970 and made long-haul flying affordable for the masses; then, in 2007, the Airbus A380 Superjumbo lumbered into the skies — a gravity-defying miracle machine capable of flying more than 850 passengers.

Sadly, with a maximum of 128 passengers, Concorde proved too small and inefficient to sell fares at anything but astronomical prices. After a glorious, but loss-making, 27 years, economics triumphed over engineering and it was mothballed in 2003.

Now, it looks like the A380 Superjumbo is going the same way but for the polar opposite reasons.

So vast is this cruise ship of the skies that the airlines who’ve bought it are struggling to fill it. Combined with its gas-guzzling four engines, that makes it hugely inefficient to run.

Not only that, but only a small number of airports in the world are big enough to cope with it.

After an initial flurry of orders, demand from airlines ground to a halt years ago. Singapore Airlines — one of the Superjumbo’s biggest customers, recently gave one back, unable to make it pay, and placed its next big order with smaller craft from Boeing.

Malaysia Airlines’ Irish chief executive Peter Bellew is even mulling a plan to cram more seats into his empty A380s and use them to ferry 800 Muslim pilgrims a pop to Mecca.

Emirates, by far the A380’s biggest customer, yesterday reported an 82% collapse in profits. Like Malaysia and others, it has suffered from Trump’s clampdown on travel from Muslim countries, but also blamed Brexit and European terrorism.

Even without those factors, there is an absurd overcapacity in long-haul that is hurting everybody. Airlines are trying to minimise the damage by flying more, smaller planes like Airbus’s twin-engine A350, offering greater flexibility and choice to long-haul passengers.

For many industry experts, that can only lead you to one conclusion: Emirates will soon start cancelling its A380 orders.

And, if that happens, production of this mighty feat of human endeavour would surely come crashing down to ground. Along with the £530 million we taxpayers invested in aid to launch it.

But what of the 747; the plane that single-handedly meant pretty much anyone on an average salary could join the jet set?