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| Image : A Periam Photography/Shutterstock |
The national carrier of South Korea is planning to restore its super jumbo back in service to Seoul - New York route starting July. Korean Air was among the very few airlines that brought back the Airbus A380 from storage on September 2020, but it was operating only one weekly flight to Guanzhu. But now that the demand has rebound, the super jumbo is scheduled to fly to JFK.
Since the rebound of demand on air traveling, airlines have been fine tuning their schedules to accommodate several factors, such as fuel prices, staff shortage and airports lack of readiness. Korean Air is one of those airlines monitoring the demand, and acting accordingly. Therefore, starting July 1st until the IATA winter timetable in October, Korean Air will operate a daily Airbus A380 rotation between Seoul Incheon Airport and New York's JFK Airport.
The A380 flight schedule will be as follows:
- KE81 - Seoul Incheon Airport (ICN) 10:00 - New York JFK Airport (JFK) 11:20 - Airbus A380 - 14h20m
- KE82 - New York JFK Airport (JFK) 13:40 - Seoul Incheon Airport (ICN) 13:40+1 - Airbus A380 - 14h55m
With these Korean Air A380 scheduled flights, JFK will be one of the busiest A380 airports in the world. Singapore Airlines operates a fifth freedom A380 service from Singapore to JFK with one stop in Frankfurt in both directions.
Emirates is operating two daily direct A380 flights from Dubai (DXB) to JFK along with a daily fifth freedom A380 flight via Milan Malpensa (MXP).
With this Korean Air schedule, the airline will need to bring back more A380's to operate on those routes. As for JFK route requires at least two A380s as the rotation takes around 28 hours, which means that Tuesday flight would depart before Monday flight returned. Let's not forget the Guanzhou route, which means that Korean Air will need three A380's representing 30% on its A380 fleet of ten aircrafts.
In May 2019, Korean Air was operating the A380 to Heathrow, Charles De Gaulle and Los Angeles International. As demand is building up to pre-pandemic levels, these routes will fit the super jumbo that we might see more Korean Air A380's flying to those destinations.
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