Airbus Updates No.2723

Hi Fly A380 Reconfigured for Cargo Operations

July 07

14:242020

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 by Filippo Martini

LONDON – Hi Fly (5K), the first charter airline to have an Airbus A380 in the world, has created extra cargo capacity on its A380 by removing economy seats from much of the aircraft. This is to meet the increased demand for cargo during the coronavirus crisis.

The specially configured aircraft now offers more than 300 square meters of cargo volume, for close to 60 tons of cargo. According to the photo released on the airline social media, apparently both decks of the plane were reconfigured.

HiFly A380 interiors video – Credits: Hi Fly

AIRBUS A380 CARGO CONVERSION

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The project to convert the “Whale” in a full cargo plane was promoted in early May by Lufthansa Technik (LH) that stated they even had a request from an A380 owner for such a conversion but declined to name the airline.

This kind of restyle is not new for this project as in the past Airbus itself proposed the Airbus A380F, later quit as only FedEx supported the cause.

HI FLY A380 HISTORY

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HiFly acquired the Airbus A380 after Singapore Airlines chose not to renew the lease on its first A380 after 10 years. The plane has the registration code 9H-MIP. It was painted in the special “Save the Coral Reefs” livery in collaboration with Mirpuri Foundation; and then leased to the airlines that needed it to cover mainly the Boeing 787 engines issues.

In the past months however they started using the A380 from China and back to help the countries that needed the PPE, after ending flights for humanitarian support in the past days it started missions for rempatriation flights.

HiFly A380 at Rome Fiumicino – Credits: Daniel Veronesi – RomeAviationSpotters

ABOUT HI FLY

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Hi Fly is a charter airline with the headquarter in Lisbon, Portugal, and the aircraft base in Beja, Portugal, that started flight operations back in 2006.

The carrier has a mixed fleet of 2 Airbus A319, 2 Airbus A321, 9 Airbus A330-200 and -300, 2 Airbus A330-900, 6 Airbus A340-300, and 1 Airbus A380. 5K also used to have a few Airbus A340-500 and Airbus A310.

Airbus Updates No.2644

Years after cancellation, A380 freighter’s time may have come

FedEx’s crystal ball was clearly having an off-day when it churned out predictions for the Airbus A380 freighter 15 years ago. The US express cargo giant, once the launch operator of the A380F, expected to take delivery of the aircraft in 2008, enthused about a -900 stretched cargo variant, and forecast that passenger-to-freighter A380s would arrive by 2020.

None of this came to pass, of course. Unable to offer sufficient capability or logistical convenience to compete with the Boeing 777F and 747-8F, the A380F remained an artist’s impression, airbrushed almost as completely from Airbus’s archives as it was from its order book.

But FedEx’s prognostication, to be fair, was not entirely for the birds. Just as the dedicated freighter was going out of fashion, there are suddenly not enough aircraft with ‘F’ suffixes to go round.

No sooner had Antonov’s colossal An-225 been restored to flight status than it was pressed into counter-pandemic service. Alaskan cargo hub Anchorage has become the world’s busiest airport. And in a locked-down world, passenger seats are simply taking up perfectly good box space.

So the A380 finally – and almost as FedEx foresaw – seems poised to make its debut, in 2020, in the role of a passenger jet-turned-freighter, albeit as something of an understudy to the original A380F concept.

Economic analysts have not been as kind to the A380 as its passengers. But curiously, at a time when its greatest supporters – the fare-paying public – are unable to fly, the A380’s participation in a global humanitarian exercise will probably silence the cynics for a while. Hands up if you saw that coming.