An Irish Dublin-based plane leasing company Amedeo is set to create its own airline because it is unable to find anyone to borrow its A380 super jumbos.
Company counts eight A380s among its fleet, alongside its 20 on order from Airbus, but the lack of interest in the world’s largest passenger plane has made it unable to renew its leases, or find new customers, despite a series of months of negotiations.
So Amedeo has come up with a novel solution of launching its own A380-only airline. Mark Lapidus, Amedeo’s chief executive, says that the new airline’s business model will offer seats to existing carriers, or to potential non-traditional arrivals like Airbnb. Passengers would be buying their ticket through another company, while Amedeo will operate the flight, using its own cabin crew but tailoring the service so it suits the client.
According to Mr Lapidus Joint ventures and codeshares make passengers feel accustomed to buying tickets with one (airline) but flying with another and Amedeo would apply for an air operator’s licence in 2018.
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The increasing collection of low-cost airlines offering long-haul flights, just like Norwegian, WOW Air, Level & Air Asia X, will be obvious targets for the company. Mr Lapidus said it was in early discussion with several possible customers, including non-aviation firms such as Airbnb who look for a simple way to enter the market.
In January, the A380 needed “disruptive” airlines to get a secured future, citing Norwegian, and suggested that it was a natural fit for budget airlines willing to squeeze in further economy class seats. While the A380 has been certified to carry up to 868 people, most operators do use a 2 or 3 class seating configuration meaning that it carries far fewer in practice. On some of the flights, Emirates, for instance, carries 399 economy class passengers and 76 in business class as well as 14 in 1st class, for a sum of 489.
He also termed at the time “When the A380 is properly configured with 600 to 700 seats it beats the economics in terms of unit costs of anything flying,”.
Whether the proposal could save the A380 remains to be seen. The model has not won any new customer in two years and at the Dubai Airshow earlier this month, Emirates, its bigger client, backtracked on an anticipated order for 38 of the super jumbos -it bought fourty Boeing 787-10s instead. Only a few days later Singapore Airlines grounded and stored one of its A380s after only 10 years of use.
