Airbus Updates No.3626

 Emirates’ CCO Shares Photos Of Its 1st A380 Being Scrapped

Emirates’ Chief Commerical Officer, Adel Al Redha, has shared photos of the airline’s first Airbus A380 being dismantled at Dubai World Central Airport, surrounded by other Airbus A380s. Yesterday the airline revealed that parts of the 14-year-old aircraft would be upcycled and sold, such as the A380’s bar.

Across the board, it is a good time to be an Emirates Airbus A380. The airline is rapidly bringing jets out of service as it adds capacity to its recovering network. Just this weekend, the airline added six destinations back to the A380 route map, aiming to have 50 of its jets in the skies by the end of the year.

A sad end for A6-EDA

A6-EDA is a special aircraft for Emirates. It was the first Airbus A380 that the airline took delivery of all the way back in 2008. While Emirates isn’t looking to retire the type from its fleet, some of its older A380 jets are leaving service. Unfortunately, A6-EDA has been assigned a similar fate to the first Singapore Airlines A380s that were retired.

Yesterday, Adel Al Redha, the CCO of Emirates, shared photos on Instagram showing the progress of scrapping A6-EDA. The jet had been jacked up, with key components such as flaps, engines, and landing gear removed. Many of these will become spare parts for the airline’s remaining A380s.

Once key components had been removed from the jet, it came time to cut the remaining hull up. One of the first parts removed was the aircraft’s tail section. While the tail itself appears to have been removed relatively early on, the horizontal stabilizers remained as the section was removed.

The scenes are reminiscent of a couple of A380s currently being dismantled by Singapore Airlines Engineering in Singapore. Emirates Engineering isn’t directly dismantling A6-EDA. Instead, a third party named Falcon Aircraft Recycling is undertaking the work. Commenting on the process, Andrew Tonks, the Director of Falcon, remarked,

“Approximately 190 tonnes of various metals, plastics, carbon fiber composites and other materials will be removed from the aircraft and passed on for recycling or repurposing via our upcycling programme with Wings Craft… Our teams are currently busy with the breakdown and final concepts for the first batch of unique upcycled items.”

 What will become of the giant?

While Emirates didn’t save the aircraft itself, many smaller parts of the jet will live on. Parts that haven’t been salvaged for spares or recycled will instead be upcycled. Upcycling is the process of reusing an object to create a product of higher value than the original.

Parts of the aircraft, including the bar, will be upcycled and sold. Photo: Getty Images

Yesterday, Emirates revealed that the aircraft’s bar is one of the components from the Airbus A380 that will be sold on. Other items that may be upcycled include the aircraft’s seating, while parts of the fuselage are always popular with collectors.

Emirates hasn’t revealed how it will sell the items being created from the A380, though we do know that the airline will be keen to publicize the sale as soon as it’s ready. As such, we’re keeping a close eye on proceedings and will share further details as and when they become available.