Hi Fly Malta ends A380 operations

Hi Fly Malta (HFM, Malta Int’l) completed the previously announced retirement of its only A380-800, 9H-MIP (msn 6), on December 15, 2020. The Airbus quadjet operated its last ever commercial services between December 9 and December 15, ferrying medical supplies from Seoul Incheon and Shanghai Pudong to Hamburg Helmut Schmidt. On December 15, the aircraft was repositioned from the German airport to Berau, the base of Hi Fly Malta’s parent Hi Fly (5K, Beja). It will be ferried for part-out on December 17, 2020. The 14.1-year-old aircraft was initially delivered to Singapore Airlines (SQ, Singapore Changi). The ch-aviation fleets history module shows that it was retired by the Singaporean carrier in November 2017 and subsequently added by Hi Fly in July 2018. It was the world’s only A380-800 active in the second-hand market. The Maltese ACMI/charter specialist initially operated the quadjet for passenger charters (including briefly for Norwegian due to the B787s’ Rolls-Royce Trent engine issues) before removing the passenger seats and converting it to a makeshift freighter during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, despite the conversion and a spike in demand for cargo, the aircraft only sporadically operated cargo flights. Following the retirement of Hi Fly Malta’s A380, the number of operators of the type across the world has now dropped to 12. More than half of all A380s are operated by Emirates (EK, Dubai Int’l), which is also the only airline that actively uses a significant number of the quadjets on its scheduled flights. China Southern Airlines (CZ, Guangzhou) and Korean Air (KE, Seoul Incheon) deploy a very limited number of their A380s, while the remaining nine operators have parked their entire A380 fleets.