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Emirates operates the world’s largest commercial A380 fleet with an amazing 85 aircraft and it operates the world’s largest commercial 777 fleet with an even more amazing 160 aircraft. No other airline even comes close to matching those figures.
Today Emirates announced that it has retired the last A340 and A330 aircraft in its fleet leaving it with nothing but A380s and 777s to operate its global network.
The last A330 that Emirates retired was 14.5 years old and had flown for over 60,000 hours. To put those hours into perspective, this A330 had flown almost 28 million miles…equivalent to almost 60 return trip to the moon.
Not only has Emirates been retiring certain types of aircraft from its fleet but it also intends to keep retiring aircraft in a concerted effort to keep the average age of its fleet as low as possible.
Since January 2015, Emirates has retired 18 A330 and 5 A340 aircraft from its fleet. The average age of the Airbus A330 and A340 aircraft phased out from the fleet is 16.5 years- a figure which is well below the industry standard retirement age of 25 years.
In addition to the aircraft that have been retired from active service since January 2015, Emirates plans to further phase out some 25 aircraft over the course of 2017 and 2018 to ensure that the operating fleet remains modern and efficient while offering customers a higher level of comfort and safety.
Image courtesy of Mark Harkin via Flickr
As the older aircraft are shown the door the airline keeps bringing new aircraft in:
The retirement of older aircraft is balanced by the induction of younger, more modern aircraft into the fleet. This has resulted in Emirates operating one of the youngest fleets in the industry with an average age of 5.2 years.
The two youngest aircraft in the fleet- Emirates’ 85th A380- the first of the new generation A380 aircraft delivered in October 2016 and Emirates’ 125th Boeing 777-300ER- are less than 2 weeks old. Emirates’ fleet of all Airbus A380 and Boeing 777 aircraft will also have a smaller environmental impact as both aircraft types have better fuel efficiency and emissions performance than the retired aircraft.
Come the end of this year Emirates will have taken delivery of 20 new Airbus A380s and 16 Boeing 777s just in the last 12 months….and it has a further 234 aircraft on order!
As impressive as all of these figures are it’s important to keep one thing in mind – Emirates is a good airline but an even better publicity machine.
The Airbus A380 is the aircraft that Emirates shows off all the time and the one that the airline puts to the fore at every opportunity…and there’s a very good reason for that. While the A380 is the headline grabber with its on-board showers, impressive bar and over-top cabins…..
Emirates A380 First Class – Bling-tastic!
….the Boeing 777 is more than a little disappointing with old-fashoined angle-flat seats laid out in a 2-3-2 layout in Business Class:
Emirates 777 Business Class
What’s worse is that the airline has announced that it will be replacing these old Business Class seats with an updated version of the same seat….so flyers will still not have a true lie-flat seat or all-aisle-access.
Thanks to the Emirates publicity machine not a lot of regular folk know that the Business Class offering on Emirates 777s is worse that on American Airlines (but it is) and the myth that everything Emirates offers is fantastic lives on.
Bottom Line
The big positive for Emirates in all of this is that operating a fleet with just two types of aircraft is very efficient and a lot easier than operating a fleet with numerous different aircraft types – just ask Doug Parker at American Airlines!
From a passenger’s point of view, while I really don’t like the decor on Emirates aircraft (Etihad and Qatar Airways are much nicer) I take my hat of to the airline’s A380 – it’s a fantastic aircraft with great premium cabin products that everyone should try if they can. The more of this type of aircraft Emirates has the happier I will be.
On the other hand the Emirates 777 offering is very ordinary indeed and nothing to get excited about….so the fact that the airline now has 160 of these aircraft isn’t that important or impressive. This is an aircraft that I will actively try to avoid if possible because there are a lot of better options out there.
