Malaysia Airlines Bhd (MAB) has an internal timeline of hiving off either all or part of its six A380-800 super jumbos by the end of this year. The airline took delivery of its first A380 in May 2012 with the last delivered in March 2013. There were plans for the A380 to position Malaysia Airlines as a top-tier premium long-haul carrier. The airline scheduled the plane on regular runs to London, Sydney and Seoul. However, the A380 never lived up to expectations at Malaysia Airlines. The aircraft did decent business flying the seasonal Haj and Umrah charters flights to Jeddah and Medina under Project Amal.
Malaysia Airlines currently operates a fleet of 74 aircraft, comprising six A350s, 21 A330-200s/300s and 47 737-800s. The airline is in the final stages of negotiation with several lessors for 21 A330 wide-bodies and aims for entry into service by the second quarter of 2024. The new planes would come on top of the 25 737 MAX jets it will take delivery from Boeing starting next year.
Source: The Star
Deliveries of the 737 MAX planes were initially scheduled to commence in July last year, but Malaysia suspended the aircraft in March 2019 after the MAX planes were grounded worldwide following two deadly crashes.
The airline will lease the majority of the 21 A330s rather than buy them. MAB’s history for the last five years has been 100% leased.
There is no update of its financial status – how much losses has been incurred in 2021 or first-half of 2022? What is the accumulated losses? RM28 billion? What is the turnaround plan? Why is the service level so poor? And will the Government produce a “white” paper or status of this airline and its future? None of these will happen, because the Government hardly believes in transparency and accountability. If you ask Najib, it is all PH’s fault. And if you ask PAS, this is something we have to accept because God wills it!
The pandemic has badly affected the aviation industry. Lufthansa and Air France never put their A380s back into service after they were grounded, deciding to retire their entire fleets instead, while Qatar sent half of its fleet to permanent storage. Meanwhile, Qantas, British Airways, Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, All Nippon and Korean Air have all announced that they are restarting A380 service.
The A380’s appeal to airlines has always been limited. It found no buyers in the US, Latin America or Africa, for instance. Should the current surge in travel demand fade and oil prices
stay elevated, British Airways may struggle to justify running partially full, four-engined 380s. The arrival of newer, fuel-efficient aircraft would once again pose an existential threat to the superjumbo.
Emirates, which operates more than 100 A380s, is retrofitting many of them with premium economy seats, a class that’s proving popular with leisure travellers with money to burn as the pandemic fades. Unwanted A380s will mostly avoid the scrap yard for now, with France’s Chateauroux airport, about 250 kilometres south of Paris, inaugurating a giant hanger designed to house the double-deckers at the start of next month.
In the end, it is management isn’t it? How do you deploy resources that best meet your markets, yield and cost? Can’t we try to use them (A380) or lease it to Emirates?
References:
Malaysia Airlines sticks to end-2022 timeline to sell its A380 fleet, Kang Siew Li, TheEdgeMarkets, June 23, 2022
Predictable: Malaysia Airlines Has Not Been Able To Sell Any Of Its Airbus A380s, Andrew Curran, Simple Flying, June 14, 2022
20 astonishing facts about the A380 superjumbo, Jacopo Prisco, CNN, December 18, 2021
Once-spurned superjumbos return to skies as travel roars back, Angus Whitley, Bloomberg, June 20, 2022
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