In another remarkable oddity of the current pandemic crisis, only one airline is still flying the super-giant A380, and the two it’s flying are carrying freight instead of passengers in those 500+ seats.
Ironically, it’s not Emirates, which owns half the world’s A380s but China Southern which has never been happy with the plane’s economics. But for now, it’s keeping two of its five planes on the road, or rather in the air, carrying freight from China to Europe, North America and Australia, delivering medical supplies and more from China’s reopening factories.
It’s the vast passenger cabin that makes it a useful plane for those flights just now, with cartons of merchandise strapped into seats as though they were passengers—no room for containers or pallets with only passenger doors. There’s also a cargo hold, but ironically, the A380 has less cargo room than the smallest 777. Airbus did not see a cargo market for the A380, preferring to fit in more seats.
