From Queen of the Skies to scrap metal: The life and death of giant planes

The Age

10-06-2025

At 19, the world's oldest commercial A380 is hardly ancient but – in aircraft years – it's reached an age at which most large jets (the affectionate nickname for all wide, long bodied aircraft) retire to the great boneyards of the desert. Not this one though: after a five-year hiatus, it's back ploughing the skies for Emirates, according to simpleflying.com.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) says that most planes have a life cycle of about 25-30 years, but that includes a long period of research and development before their first commercial flights take off. If you find yourself on a comparatively ancient aircraft, don't worry: planes are subjected to frequent tests to ensure safety and usually retire because they become less commercially competitive rather than dangerous.
The birth of a giant aircraft
A wide-body aeroplane's journey involves a long period of incubation and subsequent nurturing before it can go out into the world. 'The journey from the design board to commercial service for a commercial aircraft is one of the most complex undertakings in modern industrial engineering,' says Linus Benjamin Bauer, founder and managing direction of the aviation consultancy BAA & Partners. 'Typically, the aircraft development programme takes up to 15 years to bring a new aircraft such as the A380 to market.'
The original jumbo, Boeing's 747, was conceived in 1966 and began to fly commercially four years later thanks to tight deadlines imposed by its first purchaser, Pan Am. But, before paying passengers can get onboard, planes face 'initial conceptual studies, customer consultations, digital modelling, prototype development and regulatory certification,' according to Bauer.
'Certification itself is particularly rigorous,' he says. 'Manufacturers must demonstrate compliance with thousands of airworthiness requirements. Each new aircraft must pass a full-scale evacuation test – where all passengers must exit within 90 seconds using only half the available exits. Structural integrity is validated through static testing, where airframes are pushed 50 per cent beyond their design limits, and fatigue testing, which simulates decades of flight cycles.'
These tests can make or break a plane's popularity: when they uncovered issues with weight in some of Boeing's earliest 787 aircraft (nicknamed the 'Terrible Teens'), the planes were rejected by airlines including All Nippon Airways and Royal Air Maroc, according to the website planespotters.net (though they now take to the skies with Ethiopian and Air Austral).