Originally Posted by cavortingcheetah
Perhaps there are some who may allow themselves a wry smile at the following early snippet from today's Times. It seems somewhat doubtful however, that Airbus had small airlines in mind when the A380 was putting on the drawing board.
Trying to get statistical context - sorting the current orders by size.
Excluding the ILFC, there are 138 A380 passenger planes on order.
43 to Emirates - over 30 % to a single customer (and there have been unfavourable remarks about it)
19 to Singapore
15 to Lufthansa
12 to Qantas
10 to Air France
6 each to Malaysia, Thai and Virgin
5 each to China Southern, Kingfisher and Korean Air
4 to Etihad
2 to Qatar.
The orders of 6 or fewer per customer are 8 orders out of 13, and sum up to 39 frames - slightly over a quarter of all orders.
Are there many airlines who would like to operate a few of A380 frames, perhaps as flagships of their fleets? Boeing 747 and 747SP were bought by a fair number of small customers... flag carriers needed them!