Emirates Orders SuperJumbo 615 Seat A380
Emirates Airline has taken delivery of its first two-class Airbus A380 as it makes final preparations for the type’s debut into scheduled service from December 1, 2015. The airline, the largest customer for the SuperJumbo, is introducing the higher density configuration to meet demand trends on some of its busier routes.
The aircraft, A6-EOP, was handed-over to Emirates at the Airbus Finkenwerder production facility in Hamburg on November 4, 2015 and ferried across to the airline’s DXB base. It will join a 67 strong fleet of the type and although identical from the outside will offer up to 20 per cent more seats on the inside.
Emirates has been operating the A380 since December 2008 and its current fleet has a variety of different configurations, albeit all with a three-class offering. These all have a 14-seat First Class and 76-seat Business Class cabins but with variations in Economy layout subject to operational requirements and mission length (for example the addition of crew rest areas). This ranges from seating 399 to 429 passengers providing total capacity from 489 to 519 seats.
The new configuration removes the First Class cabin (and the showers) onboard an unspecified number of new Super Jumbos it has on order to boost its capacity offering. In the new configuration the A380 is capable of carrying 615 passengers across its business and economy cabins – accommodating 58 lie-flat seats in Business Class and 557 seats in Economy Class.
The new arrangement will initially debut in the final quarter and will enter service from December 1, 2015 on both the Dubai – Bangkok and Dubai – Copenhagen routes, and will also serve Dubai – Kuala Lumpur and DXB– MAN from January 1, 2016
