Global’s A380 Inaugural Flight

The Global Airlines A380 performed its inaugural passenger flight on Thursday, carrying a lucky few travelers from Glasgow to New York’s JFK Airport. It is absolutley an impressive accomplishment for the company. It is also still well short of promises the company has made over the years.

A total of 95 travelers made the trip, well below the A380’s capacity. Perhaps difficulty in finding the flights for sale limited demand. Or the fact that it was only available as a round-trip journey, with fixed dates. Or just not that many people in Glasgow wanted to visit New York City this weekend.

The fact that Global Airlines is, in fact, not an airline and can neither sell nor operate the flight also likely contributed to those numbers.

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The flight was operated by ACMI and charter specialist Hi Fly. Global announced a partnership with Hi Fly in 2023, focused on getting the plane refurbished and ready for passenger service. That eventually expanded to operations.

Read more: Global Airlines promised luxurious flights on a fleet of A380 superjumbos. The launch is somewhat different

Seats on the flight were sold by TravelOpedia, not Global Airlines. Indeed, Global does not hold the necessary authorities to sell flights yet; it is not an airline. Back in 2023 when the Hi Fly deal was initially signed the company expressed confidence it would hold the direct operating authorities when it launched services, though there were many (ultimately proven) reasons to doubt that at the time.

Check out a walkthrough of the upcycled China Southern interior here

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The trip comes some four years after an investor pitch deck for Global Airlines circulated. While many of the claims in that deck, from vendor partners to operating certificate status, ultimately proved to be false, it did offer some details on what founder James Asquith believed the economics of operating the A380 were.

Even before considering the overhead of paying Hi Fly to operate the plane, and that of TravelOpedia to manage the charter, and the cost of leaving a plane at JFK for a few days, it seems likey this initial operation lost money. But airlines rarely make money at the beginning. The Manchester flight in a couple weeks might fare better.

And after that, who knows? The company has not updated the long-term plans around a larger operation or more flights.

Maybe operating these trips is enough to secure another round of funding to push towards an operating certificate and becoming a real airline. Or getting another plane. Or just putting more charter flights up for sale. Or relaunching its website, which currently has no content, including no link to buy via the charter company.

And we’ll eventually find out if the company has the funding and commitment to become an airline after all.