Danish tourists bound for Cyprus on Wednesday were set to get more room than they bargained for as the first used A380 superjumbo begins its new life with a trip to the Mediterranean holiday island from Copenhagen.
The Airbus SE plane, the world’s biggest passenger jet, will depart for Larnaca at 8:15 p.m. local time and complete the journey in about 4 hours, a comparative hop for an aircraft that previously operated between Singapore and far-flung cities across the globe.
The superjumbo, registration 9H-MIP, will perform the flight for Thomas Cook Group Plc’s Scandinavian arm after the tour operator was left without an aircraft following a technical issue on the Greek island of Rhodes. The service would ordinarily use an Airbus A321 narrow-body plane with less than half the capacity of an A380, a model that’s popular with passengers but has struggled to win orders as airlines prefer smaller, more efficient jets.
The double-decker was relocated to Copenhagen from Beja in Portugal, home base to the plane’s new operator Hi Fly—which is leasing it from owner Doric for almost six years—data from tracking service Flightradar24 shows.
A further flight will see the A380 operate from Oslo to Majorca and back on Thursday, according to London-based Thomas Cook, which said its using the jet as a stop-gap. That suggests it’s not the client Hi Fly Chief Executive Officer Paulo Mirpuri said in July would lease the plane for several months.
Hi Fly will likely need to find a succession of customers willing to take the superjumbo on a short-term or seasonal basis through the life of its contract. The A380 was returned to its German owner Doric earlier this year after a decade of service with Singapore Airlines Ltd.
