The $75,000,000 Reason The A380 Won't Die

Go to https://surfshark.com/arran or use code ARRAN at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN! The A380 was supposed to be finished. Production ended, the airframes were written off, and whole fleets were pushed into the desert to rot. By every measure the industry uses to judge an aircraft, it lost. So why is British Airways pulling 48 seats out of its biggest plane and spending tens of millions per jet to rebuild it? In a hangar in Manila, one of them is being taken apart right now, not to be scrapped, but to come back worth more than the day it was delivered. I went looking for the answer, and it has almost nothing to do with the aircraft. In this video I trace how the most loss-making airliner ever built became the smartest asset in the sky, why every airline that quit it is flying it again, and why its second life may be a lot shorter than the airlines betting on it would like to admit. A huge thanks to Jonny Clark from TheDesignAir for taking part in this video! Go and check out his channel, and his website here: https://thedesignair.net/ Contents: 0:00 Gutted in Manila 1:22 Airbus's giant bet 3:50 Orders never came 4:31 Sponsor: Surfshark 6:29 The wiring disaster 7:56 The line closes 8:34 Rotting in the desert 10:04 No second life 10:45 Lufthansa changes its mind 11:57 Everyone brings them back 13:38 A $75m slot 15:20 Revenue per slot 15:53 615 versus 426 18:05 Where survivors fly 20:16 Deliberately removing seats 23:49 The engine clock 25:10 Nothing replaces it 27:34 100,000 seats vanish