PHOTOS

In Pics: End of an era - Final Airbus A380 delivered to Emirates, check image gallery

Airbus has finally delivered its final A380 to Emirates, its 123rd unit of the world's largest commercial passenger plane, bringing the entire double-decker jet program to a close. The Airbus A380 was the only surviving double decker program, even though the announcement to kill the production was announced in 2019. Post the announcement, Airbus was only assembling the last few orders, the final one being from the Dubai-based airline, who owns the largest fleet of A380. With this, Emirates has become the airline to get both the first and the final unit of Airbus A380. We take a look at some of Airbus A380 images from the Emirates fleet.

Arjit Garg|

Updated:Dec 17, 2021, 01:35 PM IST

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Last Airbus A380 draws goodbye message

The plane bearing MSN 272 number is the 123rd A380 delivered to Emirates and recently did pre-delivery test flight leaving a heartfelt goodbye to the A380 program in the sky. The image of the same has been shared by FlightRadar24, a flight tracking website.

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Final Airbus A380 delivered to Emirates

With the delivery of the A380, the production of double-decker program comes to an end, putting closure to a chapter that began on April 27th, 2005. Strangely, it's the smallest tenure for any aircraft, and more so, for an aircraft with an impeccable safety record. Within 14 years after the aircraft entered service, the program comes to an end.

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Emirates' Airbus A380

However, end of production doesn't necessarily mean the end of the Airbus A380 program by a long way. Emirates will continue to operate the A380 for at least a decade, while other airlines who owns A380 and put them at rest have committed to fly them again once the situation improves.

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Emirates' Airbus A380

The Dubai-based airline was the first to place an order for the A380, then called the A3XX, way back at the 2000 Farnborough Airshow, and has since grown to be the A380’s largest customer with 123 aircrafts inducted in the fleet.

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Emirates' Airbus A380

The Airbus A380 first joined the Emirates fleet in 2008 and has been used for more than 380,000 flights. With two of the airline’s A380s already retired, Emirates now has a fleet of 121 A380s. Earlier this year the airline revealed that one of those retired, its first-ever A380, has been dismantled.

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First-ever Airbus A380 delivery

The first ever Airbus was deliverd to Emirates but the lack of demand for the A380 forced Airbus, the French plane maker to rethink its decision on the production of this giant bird and in February 2019, they decided to kill the A380 program.