Emirates Takes Delivery of Its 117th Airbus A380 As It Awaits First With Premium Economy
Emirates 117th A380 has been delivered from Airbus. The aircraft departed Airbus’ facilities at Hamburg Finkenwerder for its new home at Dubai International Airport on December 11th. This leaves just six A380s left to be delivered by Airbus before the complete end to the superjumbo program.
With such few A380s remaining in the production line, each one seems newsworthy. However, the 118th A380 will be extra special as it marks Emirates’ first aircraft fitted out with its new premium economy cabin.
Emirates’ 117th Airbus A380
Published via Twitter, Emirates announced on December 13th that it had taken delivery of its 117th Airbus A380. According to AIB Family Flights, this aircraft has MSN 264 and is registered as A6-EVM.
While flight data for this particular aircraft seems to be unavailable, AIB Family Flights notes that the aircraft departed Hamburg Finkenwerder on December 11th at 17:23 UTC. Having a near-identical departure time to the last A380 delivered, A6-EVL, this would have been an overnight delivery flight of about seven hours, arriving in Dubai at around 05:30 in the morning, local time.
The bigger deal: Emirates’ 118th A380
What’s more exciting about Emirates’ announcement is the additional note mentioning that it will soon receive its next A380, “its first with the long-awaited signature Premium Economy.”
For the last few months now, we at Simple Flying have been left wondering when the first premium-economy-equipped A380 will arrive at Emirates.
According to FlightGlobal, Tim Clark spoke about the new premium economy cabin in an online interview hosted by Arabian Travel Market. While the details were kept brief, he said that the first A380 to have the new premium economy cabin installed is sitting in Toulouse ready to go. This is something we reported on in June.
With A6-EVL being the first aircraft delivered since the story was written, we suspected that the aircraft was ‘the one.’ However, it appears that it will be two aircraft later as A6-EVN (assuming the registrations are in alphabetical order as is quite common.)
Therefore, A6-EVN is the aircraft to watch as it will be the very first Emirates jet to feature a premium economy cabin. It looks like this aircraft is at Airbus’ facilities at Hamburg Finkenwerder and has been undergoing test flights.
On December 7th, the aircraft operated its 8th test flight, registered as F-WWAU.
Just six A380s left
Emirates was to receive three A380s by the end of the year, and at least one will have a premium economy cabin. This means that A6-EVN will be the last aircraft of 2020, with the remaining five to arrive in 2021.
- On November 30th, A6-EVR was spotted in primer for the first time with its engines installed.
- On November 26th, A6-EVQ had its first flight and was ferried from assembly facilities in Toulouse to Hamburg.
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