He wants to transform an A380 into a hotel, close to the factory where the super jumbo was assembled
In Costa Rica or Stockholm, tourists can sleep one night in a Boeing. In a few months, those who will come to Toulouse to discover the Airbus assembly lines or even the museum Aeroscopia could fall asleep in the cockpit of an A380 dreaming of soaring above the clouds.
It is in any case the crazy project that an employee of the European aircraft manufacturer has launched. The latter imagined during the confinement the possibility of fitting out the 555 m2 of surface area of the super jumbo of the air in a 31-room hotel, including 2 suites. This idea germinated in July 2020 in the mind of Frédéric Deleuze, industrial project manager at the aircraft manufacturer, when the group announced a job cut plan. At that time, like many “Airbusians”, he wondered what he could do.
“At the same time, I had a meeting on ecodesign and during a discussion we retained the dismantling of the A380. We thought we could make a house out of it in a joking tone. The genesis of the project was born at that time, with the idea that instead of demolishing this plane which had required thousands of hours of work, we could redevelop it, “explains the man who embarked on the project. ‘adventure.
A multidisciplinary team
And for this project to make sense, beyond that of recycling the giant of the air differently, he said to himself that the best place where he could install it is near the Lagardère factory, there where the Airbus super jumbo was still assembled a few months ago. To complete the offer, he imagined building a 60-seat restaurant in the shape of a control tower on the tarmac of his hotel.
To move from dream to reality, the aeronautical engineer has surrounded himself with a team of specialists, whether in the field of hospitality-tourism or construction. Today, a technical and economic profitability study is underway. Land identified and negotiations initiated. “An interdisciplinary work takes place because it is necessary to be innovative, to know which materials to use, at what cost while respecting the regulatory aspects. Furnishing a room in an airplane with rounded parishes is not classic, you have to adapt the partitions, for example,” explains Elodie Galko of the Duval promotions group, which embarked on the adventure of this project called “Envergure”. .
By the end of this quarter, the viability of this project, the cost of which amounts to several million euros, will be failing. Frédéric Deleuze is at the same time working on the purchase of an A380 destined to be scrapped. And he received the support of Jean_Claude Dardelet, the president of the attractiveness of Toulouse Métropole.
If all the boxes are checked, this new hotel-restaurant could be scrapped by 2024. And airplane fans could afford a night in a room fitted out in the fuselage for 120 to 140 euros, or a suite in the cockpit for a little more. Ready to take off?