The Airbus A380 is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine jet airliner manufactured by Airbus. It is the world's largest passenger airliner, and many airports have upgraded facilities to accommodate it. It was initially named Airbus A3XX and designed to challenge Boeing's monopoly in the large-aircraft market. The A380 made its first flight on 27 April 2005 and entered commercial service in October 2007 with Singapore Airlines. The Airbus A380 is the world's largest passenger airliner, a wide-body aircraft manufactured by Airbus. Airbus studies started in 1988 and the project was announced in 1990 to challenge the dominance of the Boeing 747 in the long haul market. The first prototype was unveiled in Toulouse on 18 January 2005, with its first flight on 27 April 2005. It obtained its EASA and FAA type certificates on 12 December 2006. Difficulties in electrical wiring caused a two-year delay and the development cost ballooned to €18 billion. It was first delivered to Singapore Airlines on 15 October 2007 and entered service on 25 October. Production peaked at 30 per year in 2012 and 2014. On 14 February 2019, after Emirates reduced its last orders in favour of the A350 and the A330neo, Airbus announced that A380 production would end by 2021.[6] The full-length double-deck aircraft has a typical seating capacity of 525, though it is certified for up to 853 passengers. It is powered by four Engine Alliance GP7200 or Rolls-Royce Trent 900 turbofans providing a range of 8,000 nmi (14,800 km). As of February 2019, Airbus has received 290 firm orders and delivered 235 aircraft; Emirates is the biggest A380 customer with 123 ordered, of which 109 have been delivered.

In February 2019, Airbus announced it will end the A380 production by 2021, after its main customer, Emirates, agreed to drop an order for 39 of the aircraft, replacing it with 40 A330-900s and 30 A350-900s. However, airlines underwent a fundamental transition to a point-to-point system, which gets customers to their destination in one flight instead of two or three. The massive scale of the A380 design was able to achieve a very low cost for passenger seat-distance, but efficiency here within the hub-and-spoke paradigm was not able to overcome the efficiency of fewer flights required in the point-to-point system. Consequently, the orders for VLAs (very large aircraft with more than 400 seats) slowed in the mid-2010s, as widebody twin jets now offer similar range and greater fuel efficiency, giving airlines more flexibility at a lower upfront cost