Timely Teardowns For Revived Airbus A380 Market

With first delivery of the Boeing 777X delayed again, this time by one year into 2026, certain large airlines will have to lean harder for longer on the out-of-production Airbus A380 for their trunk routes.

In turn, this pushes up demand for spare parts of the superjumbo, so it proved timely when Tarmac Aerosave announced at MRO Europe 2024 that it is to dismantle three A380s already in storage with the French company.

Lionel Roques, VP sales at Tarmac, notes that Tarmac expects to recover 1,000 to 2,000 parts on average per A380, with some of these, mostly computers and avionics, also expected to feed into used serviceable material supply (USM) for the A350.

Roques foresees a “significant” number of A380s coming in for teardown to support the in-service fleet, noting another eight in the pipeline for the French company.

He also points to the influence of the world’s biggest A380 operator. “Emirates is interesting because they are buying some aircraft that are end of lease to dismantle them themselves and to feed the rest of the fleet. They're not going to receive the 777X for any time soon so they need to extend that A380 fleet.”

He adds: “It’s a bit of a shame because if we’d know about this delay at the beginning maybe the A380 might not have been stopped, but that’s history now.”

Aviation Week’s latest fleet forecast predicts that the in-service A380 fleet will remain relatively steady at around 175 aircraft over the next few years, with eight aircraft to come back from storage in 2025 and 2026 and 12 units to be retired over the same period.

Tarmac’s teardowns will occur in Tarbes, France, with the dismantling of each A380 expected to take a few months, after which the French company will have parted out 15 A380s on top of returning 29 to service.

British USM supplier Skyline Aero will select the most relevant parts to be removed. All sales and distribution will be managed by Skyline from their United Kingdom headquarters.