The Big Return: Korean Air's A380 will fly back to JFK in July


After two years of neglecting, strong words from CEOs that it will "never" fly ever again, and "buying it was a big mistake", Airbus A380 is proving that all those gentlemen were wrong - no to mention of course Tim Clark, Emirates CEO, who criticized abending the A380. 

It all started with Qatar Airways bringing back A380 to face the shortage of capacity caused by grounding 23 A350 by local regulator.

Then British Airway, whom never criticized the type, just stored it quietly and brought it back on time to meet the surge in demand for air travel. 

Qantas was next to bring back the much needed A380's, especially after retiring all its fleet of Boeing 747-400 shortly after the beginning of the pandemic. 

The real surprise was when Lufthansa confirmed the return of its A380 from retirement

Now, Korean Air is following the wagon, and announce returning its mighty Airbus A380 to New York in July and timetabling in the jumbo's return to Hong Kong and Tokyo Narita in a few months' time. The news caps a big week for the much-oppressed A380. In Seoul, Korean Air is gearing up for a surge in customer demand with South Korea reopening to tourist travel. 

In a statement released on Tuesday, Korean Air confirmed the return of the A380 and tidied up the launch dates across the three routes, with A380 flights to JFK starting soonest. Beyond the A380 news, Korean Air says it will have available seat kilometers (ASKs) back to 50% of pre-pandemic levels by September. Currently, ASKs are running at 33% of pre-pandemic levels. Korean Air previously wasn't anticipating hitting the 50% mark until December. There's a raft of route resumptions and increased frequencies about to take place across the Korean Air network.

Korean Air has been using Boeing 777-300ER aircraft on its flagship flights between Seoul (ICN) and New York (JFK) but is swapping them out for A380-800 aircraft in July. Korean Air schedules available online reveal the jumbo is servicing the route daily from July 1. That's the JFK-bound KE081 service and the Seoul-bound KE082 flights.

Korean Air's A380s are now due to start flying to Hong Kong three times a week, with services to the now-closed off city departing on Saturdays, Sundays, and Tuesdays from September 3. That Korean Air has decided to schedule A380s into Hong Kong in less than three months' time is interesting. With a late evening arrival, those A380s will turn around to operate post-midnight departures on Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday mornings from September 4. A mixture of Boeing 787-9 and 777-300ER flights will cover the ICN-HKG route on the other days of the week.

Korean Air also says their A380-800 is heading back to Tokyo Narita (NRT) daily in September. At the time of writing, Korean Air's online schedules show A330s operating three return services a day between ICN and NRT. We've reached out to Korean Air to clarify the start date and flight details and will post an update when we hear back.

Moral of the story is, even though A380 was seen as an aircraft that is "not economical", as described by Akabr Al Baker, Qatar Airways CEO, but it's the aircraft that you can count on when larger capacity is much needed. 


One last word of advise to all those gentlemen... Never Say Never Again

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