Joanna Bailey
Portuguese wet leasing specialist Hi Fly is the only wet lease company with an A380 in its fleet. Simple Flying talked to the CEO, Dr. Paulo Mirpuri, about this giant jumbo, to find out if and when the airline plans to add more Airbus A380s to its fleet.
According to figures from Airbus, there are over 140 airports worldwide that have the necessary facilities for the A380 on a regular service. A further 400 or so are equipped to handle the A380 in a ‘diversion’ capacity, meaning it could land there in an emergency but it’s not ideal for regular service.
This means that, despite getting as many as 30 requests a day to lease the A380 from Hi Fly, the company regularly has to turn these jobs down due to a lack of airport infrastructure. Dr. Mirpuri told us,