Aeronautics. Parts of an A380 sold at auction in Toulouse
And if you buy a piece of A380, this mastodon of Airbus which stopped the production of its jumbo jet in 2021 because of its high fuel consumption, its maintenance cost and especially the fall in air traffic with the pandemic? Lamps, bar, staircase, ramp, trolleys, seats and even the orange suit worn during the first flight of the prototype by pilot Claude Lelaie on April 27, 2005… In all, nearly 500 elements, the vast majority from the cabin of this emblematic device, will be offered at the auction to be held on October 13, 14 and 15, both face-to-face and remotely, under the hammer of master Marc Labarbe, auctioneer based in Toulouse.
The majority of these parts appear from the MSN 13 device, which entered service in 2008 and is used by the airline Emirates. The aircraft was then dismantled in 2021 by the company Tarmac Aerosave, a subsidiary of Airbus, located near Tarbes (Hautes-Pyrénées). “This auction remains a tribute to this device. It is in fact this program that has allowed Airbus to become what it is today”, welcomes Maître Marc Labarde.
Most of the profit from this sale will be reversed to the Airbus Foundation to finance its humanitarian initiatives. Part of the amount will also be allocated to the AIRitage association working to safeguard aeronautical heritage.
This is not the first time that Airbus has dismantled its planes to sell them. Already in 2007, the builder, who had appealed to this same auctioneer, had already orchestrated the first auction of Concorde parts. This event brought in 3.2 million euros.
New attraction for A380
This auction comes at a time when the super-jumbo is resisting and making a comeback with the airlines. Qatar is still gradually putting its seven units back into service. And the Gulf airline is not alone in bringing the A380 back into its aircraft fleet. Its neighbor Emirates flies seventy-four of them, out of the one hundred and nineteen aircraft it currently owns.
If the A380 takes advantage of a sudden attraction, not sure it lasts. Airbus does not intend to design an A380neo as in the Emirates dream. The new king of the skies is now the A321XLR, a single-aisle aircraft that has managed to reconcile the performance of a long-haul and the costs of a medium-haul.
Audrey Sommazi
On the photo: The A380 in the Toulouse factories of Airbus. // The aircraft in the Toulouse sky. Credits: Rémy Gabalda-ToulÉco.