Airbus A380 safety record
No passenger has ever died on an A380, and none has ever been lost. Its most serious incident, an engine failure in 2010, ended with a safe landing and no one hurt.
No passenger deaths, and no aircraft lost
The A380 has never had a fatal accident and none has been destroyed. Its most serious event was in 2010, when an engine on a Qantas A380 broke apart after take-off from Singapore and sent debris through the wing. The crew worked through the damage and landed back at Singapore, and nobody on board was hurt. The fault was traced to the engine and fixed across the fleet.
With a few hundred aircraft built, the A380 has flown far fewer flights than the common types, so its record is a clean one rather than a statistical rate.
The A380 in numbers
A big aircraft moves less in a gust
How much a gust moves an aircraft depends on how much weight each square metre of wing carries and how fast it flies — and on sheer size, because small, sharp gusts partly even out along a long airframe. The same pocket of bumpy air that would bounce a small jet tends to show up on an A380 as a gentle heave, because there's far more aircraft for the air to push around.
Its wings still flex, and are designed to. Watch the tips from a window seat in bumpy air and you'll see them rise and fall: the wing absorbing the gust instead of passing it straight into the cabin.
Two decks, two layouts
The main deck is the widest cabin in the sky, and airlines usually fit ten economy seats across it in a 3-4-3 layout. The upper deck is narrower because of the curve of the fuselage, so where it carries economy it's usually eight across, 2-4-2 — and many airlines keep it for premium cabins instead.
The drawing fits each deck's seats and aisles into its published width. If you can choose, the upper deck's window seats have a storage bin between the seat and the wall that nobody else can reach.
How big it really is
Nothing else in airline service comes close. The A380's wings span more than any other airliner's, and its double-deck fuselage is so tall that many airports built gates with a boarding bridge that reaches the upper deck.
Tap any other airliner to lay it over the A380 at exactly the same scale — a single-aisle jet fits comfortably inside its wings.
The A380 in white, the A320 outlined in gold. Same scale, same metre.
Airbus A380 questions
How safe is the A380?
No passenger has ever died on an A380, and none has ever been lost. Its most serious incident, an engine failure in 2010, ended with a safe landing and no one hurt. Every figure on this page is sourced — the list is at the bottom.
Is the A380 still flying?
Yes. Airbus stopped building it, but a number of airlines still fly it on their busiest long-haul routes, and the largest operator runs a big fleet of them. Some airlines retired theirs early, which is why it's rarer than it used to be.
Which is bigger, the A380 or the Boeing 747?
The A380 is bigger by almost every measure that matters to passengers: wider wings, two full decks and far more floor space. The newest 747 is slightly longer from nose to tail, but the A380 is the larger aircraft.
Why is the A380 so quiet inside?
The cabin is wide and tall, and the engines are a modern, quieter design. On the upper deck in particular, many people find it one of the quietest cabins they've flown in.
Every other airliner
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page is from the manufacturer, the certifying authority or the published accident record.
- Airbus Wingspan, Length, Cabin width, Economy
- Airbus Cabin width, Typical seats, Range, Still being built, First flight, In service since, Bent upward in the strength test
- Airbus Seat width
- law.cornell.edu Cabin altitude
- EASA type certificate data sheet Engines
- Airbus Delivered
- Wikipedia Accident record
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