In a beautifully designed staging, Airbus united its first and last-ever A380s before its farewell.
Emirates took delivery of its 123rd A380, the last A380, on Thursday, December 16 in Hamburg, Germany. The Arabian company’s close partnership with Airbus gave the huge aircraft its identity during all these years.
According to what was reported by our partner media Aeroin, this was the 251st A380 delivered by Airbus out of the 252 produced, as the first of them was used for certification testing and remains in the manufacturer’s building until today.
Marking the final farewell in the history of the world’s largest passenger airliner, before number 252 departs for the United Arab Emirates, Airbus reunited it with the first-ever, the “original” A380.
As seen in the image posted by Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury on his Twitter account, the two aircraft, the beginning and the end of an aviation milestone, were face to face:
It's been a very remarkable week!
To wrap it up, I couldn't resist sharing a priviledged moment in Hamburg: the delivery of @Emirates' final #A380, plus a special guest – "MSN001" the original A380. Thanks to all Airbus pioneers & partners who contributed to this iconic aircraft. pic.twitter.com/ZeZDzBWA9K— Guillaume Faury (@GuillaumeFaury) December 18, 2021
The gathering took place 2 days before the delivery of MSN 252. On Tuesday 14th, MSN 001 departed from Toulouse, France, and landed at 02:54 PM in Hamburg. Just over 2 hours later, at 05:02 PM, the first-ever A380 was on its way home. The time on the ground was just enough time to reunite the units and photograph them.
Besides the meeting that took place on Tuesday, following the delivery of the last A380 manufactured, Airbus also released a special video. Entitled “A380 Forever,” the production features a compilation of images from the project’s history.
In the caption, the manufacturer describes, “The journey is far from over for Airbus’ A380 double-decker aircraft, which has a special position with the airlines that have strategically placed it at the center of their fleet operations. Airbus remains fully supportive of all A380 operators and their fleets in more than 70 destinations around the world. Since entering service in 2007, the flagship A380 has operated more than 800,000 flights carrying more than 300 million passengers.”
Here is the beautiful video:
A summary of the first flight in the history of the A380 project, which took place just over 16 years ago, on April 27, 2005, was published by the European manufacturer in 2010:
