Hamburg, Germany - The third and final Airbus A380 for All Nippon Airways rolled out the painting shop at the manufacturer's Hamburg plant.
The third superjumbo is featuring Hawaii's well-known sea turtle "Honu" just like the other two A380 delivered to the Japanese carrier last year.
The first two aircraft were painted blue and green respectively. The third copy has an orange sea turtle on the hull.
ANA offers its Superjumbos with 520 seats in a four-class configuration - eight in First Class, 56 in Business Class, 73 in Premium Economy and 383 in Economy Class. The planes serve exclusively on the route between Tokyo Narita and Honolulu in Hawaii, a popular destination for Japanese tourists.
All Nippon Airways is the fourteenth and last customer for the Airbus' iconic superjumbo. Airbus will cease the production of the aircraft in 2021 due to the lack of demand from customers.
The last Airbus A380 will be delivered to the Gulf-based operator Emirates in 2021. Emirates is the largest operator of the double-decker plane (115 copies) in the world.
Few airlines other than Emirates embraced Airbus' superjumbo. Singapore Airlines and Air France are other well-known operators of the aircraft, but they already began the phase-out their A380s in the fleet.
Some were returned to the lessors and some went directly to the storages where they were dismantled for the second-hand spare part market.
Not a single North American carrier ordered or operated the aircraft. The operating cost of the A380 is higher than the other long-haul aircraft in service. It makes money when it’s full, but empty seats make it very expensive to operate on daily routes.
There aren’t many routes in the world that can maintain that level of traffic year-round.