Virgin Atlantic cancels their Airbus A380 Order

UK long-haul carrier Virgin Atlantic has canceled the six Airbus A380s that it originally ordered in 2001.

Virgin Atlantic CEO Craig Kreeger confirmed that the postponed A380 commitment was canceled “within the last couple of weeks.”

Kreeger said the firm order was previously downgraded to options as part of the order negotiations for another type—possibly as part of an earlier A330 deal.

“We have cancelled our options on the A380,” Kreeger said. “We just can’t find enough markets that made sense for an aircraft that big and it didn’t make sense to take just one or two because of fleet complexity.”

The Virgin Atlantic A380s have already been removed from Airbus’ latest backlog figures. Airbus noted the six A380 cancellations in its February orders tally, but did not provide details on the customer.

Virgin Atlantic has 12 A350-1000s on order, which will start delivering in spring 2019. These aircraft will be used to replace the airline’s remaining A340s and Boeing 747s over the next three years, taking Virgin Atlantic to a fleet of A330s, 787s and A350s.

In 2016 Virgin Atlantic placed order for 12 Airbus A350-1000s, which they’ll begin taking delivery of next year. As they began to refer to this as their new “flagship” aircraft, it became especially evident that the A380 order would never come to fruition. I imagine Airbus has known this all along, and odds are that much of Virgin Atlantic’s deposit towards the A380 could instead be put towards the A350 order.

Even though the A380 was never painted in Virgin Atlantic colors here is a edited picture of

how the aircraft would have looked. Not that bad right?!