The A380 should never have seen the light of day. Boeing offered Airbus a joint effort which Airbus refused, that was the writing on the wall, Boeing cancelling all their plans for an ultra large long haul aircraft sealed the fate of the A380. It commanded, at best, a small niche market for a few of the major carriers on certain routes. Passengers like it but that alone doesn’t make it a commercial success. Possibly intended as a B747 replacement but the B747 had already been replaced by a number of both Boeing and AirBus big twins. Quite significant is the fact that right now there is no apparent market for the 10 year old airframes that are coming up for disposal at the end of their lease period. (Put most of this on Pprune years ago, wasn’t believed though!)