Despite its early promise, the Airbus A380 has largely ended up being considered to have been something of a white elephant in the aviation industry. While the type rarely sees widespread usage at major airlines these days, the exception to this rule is 
Emirates. Indeed, the Dubai-based UAE flag carrier has almost 120 examples of the quadjet at its disposal, which it uses on routes to airports all around the world.
However, Tim Clark, who has served as the President of the Middle Eastern airline since 2003, has now claimed that other carriers have used Emirates’ reliance on the A380 as a weapon against it. Specifically, recent claims made by Clark on a podcast allege that US airlines and the 
Star Alliance effectively sabotaged the A380 by not buying it in order for it to cease production and thus weaken Emirates.
What Did Clark Say?
According to One Mile At A Time, Tim Clark made his comments on last week’s episode of The Air Show Podcast. In short, he alleged that certain airlines banded together in a concerted effort to bring production of the A380 to an end by not buying it. This, given its reliance on the type, would serve to weaken Emirates’ market position by forcing it to diversify its otherwise A380-dominated fleet of widebodies.
On this front, Clark claimed that “American carriers weren’t having anything to do with [the A380] anyway, because, in those days, this was the weapon in the armory of Emirates.” This led them to hold the position that airlines should “stop using them, because that allows them to go to Airbus to build more and more and more.” Commenting on the alleged involvement of the Star Alliance on this front, Clark added:
“There was a clear mandate in the Star group: do not buy the A380, because it gives immense power to [Emirates]. If we don’t buy it, eventually its demise will come about.”
Clark Believes US Airlines Could Have Made The A380 Work
One of the key failures of the Airbus A380 program was its inability to garner any commercial interest among major US-based carriers, such as American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines. Missing out on this lucrative market was an important reason behind the A380’s low sales, which ultimately led to its demise. However, Clark asserted that US legacy carriers could have made the A380 work.
Indeed, he argued on The Air Show that “who could say to me you could fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo with the A380, whether United, American, or Delta, and not make money?” This route is among the most lucrative of transpacific corridors, so Clark’s assertion that the superjumbo would have been a good fit for this route comes from a place of logic. However, American carriers seem to operate differently.
Indeed, for the most part, it seems that airlines flying long-haul routes from the US prioritize higher frequencies with smaller aircraft over operating fewer flights with larger aircraft. This allows them to offer more in terms of onward connectivity, and may also be a key reason why the Boeing 777X has yet to pick up any American orders. Whether this picture will change over the next few years remains to be seen.
Emirates & The A380 Today
According to ch-aviation, Emirates ordered a total of 123 A380s. With aeroTELEGRAPH noting that Airbus made 251 production examples of the type in total, this means that the UAE flag carrier accounts for almost half (49%) of the superjumbos that the firm ever delivered to airline customers.
Today, Emirates has withdrawn five of these from service, with its remaining 118 units clocking in at 10.9 years old on average (compared to a fleet-wide mean of 15.5 years). Of these aircraft, ch-aviation lists 97 as being active, while 14 are undergoing maintenance and seven are in storage.
Emirates uses its A380s to connect 
Dubai International Airport (DXB) with the world. This month, data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company, shows that the airline has scheduled 5,079 flights with the type, offering 2,624,437 seats and 10,108,446,819 available seat miles (ASMs) in doing so.
