Message Of Love In The Sky During The Last Fleet Test Flight Of The Airbus A380 Superjumbo Aircraft

The flight test route of the last fleet of Airbus A-380s that forms a 'message of love' in the air. (Twitter/@flightradar24)

JAKARTA - For aerospace lovers, the Airbus A380 has its own place, especially those who have experienced flying with it. Returning the love of its fans, this superjumbo made a message of love in the skies as the last of the A380's fleet took a test flight.

The world's largest passenger plane made its final pre-delivery flight on December 13, taking off from the Airbus facility at Hamburg-Finkenwerder Airport for a tour of northeastern Germany.

The pilot took a very special route, marking a heart-shaped (love) line, based on an image on flight tracking service FlightRadar24. The aircraft, registered as MSN 272, has been in Hamburg since March, which was the basis for final tests as well as cabin fit-out and livery painting.

This week, the plane was delivered to the largest and last customer to receive the A380, Emirates airline from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Developed at a cost of up to 25 billion US dollars, the Airbus A380, which has a capacity of up to 853 passengers, is the largest civilian aircraft in history to be mass-produced.

The first delivery of the superjumbo was to Singapore Airlines in 2007, and since then nearly 250 A380s have been launched in Toulouse. Now, it's almost three years since Airbus announced it would discontinue production of this type of aircraft.

"This is a painful decision. We have invested a lot of effort, a lot of resources and a lot of sweat into this plane," Airbus CEO Tom Enders said in February 2019 citing CNN December 15.

Airbus is exaggerating airlines' appetite for superjumbos. At the time of the 2019 announcement, it had delivered about 234 aircraft, less than half the number predicted when it was first introduced, about 600 aircraft.

As we get ready to hand over MSN272 to @emirates, here's our Flight Test team sending some ❤️ to all #A380 fans out there. #MondayMotivation pic.twitter.com/2YXkEILdLZ

— Airbus (@Airbus) December 13, 2021

As time goes by, airline interest has shifted to lighter, more fuel-efficient aircraft and the pandemic hastened plane deaths even further.

Airlines including Lufthansa, Qantas and Air France suspended their superjumbo flights last year, at a time when a sharp decline in air travel demand meant many planes were flying nearly empty.

However, as flights begin to recover albeit slowly, Singapore Airlines and British Airways have returned their superjumbos to service, so the A380 will be in our skies for a while.

Assembling the A380 was a huge task, with 1,500 companies involved in manufacturing all parts, from rivets to bolts, to seats and engines. Four million individual parts need to be flown, driven and shipped from 30 different countries.

To note, the last convoy to the Final Assembly Line (FAL) took place in February 2020, with hundreds of people gathering in the French village of Levignac to view the wings, fuselage sections and horizontal tailplanes transported by truck, just a month before the pandemic made mass gatherings impossible.

The fuselage parts come from Hamburg, Germany and Saint-Nazaire, France; horizontal tailplane manufactured in Cadiz, Spain; and the vertical tail fin was also made in Hamburg.

MSN 272, the last @Airbus A380 built, doing a low-pass & wing wave in Toulouse on March 17 before flying to Hamburg (XFW). Video: Virgile Prodault @Virgile_prd ️ @jonostrower @AirlineFlyer @airlivenet @jvreymondon @AirbusPRESS @jetcitystar @AA380fanclub @AgueraMartin @emirates pic.twitter.com/zW2PJofN6I

— Aeronews (@AeronewsGlobal) March 17, 2021