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Planes seem to keep getting bigger and bigger, but only one is the largest plane currently in the sky. Among the top 10 largest planes in the world are aircraft made for military use, like the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, which the U.S. Air Force uses to haul weapons and supplies, but could carry 350 people if it were used solely for personnel. And there’s the Stratolaunch, which looks like two planes connected at the wing. While it’s larger than any other plane, is now only used for testing hypersonic flight systems, and was mostly created for rocket launches. 

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That leaves the Airbus A380 as the largest plane currently flying in 2025, making it one of the most iconic airplanes in aviation history. It carries a whopping 545 passengers if it’s outfitted in a typical setup where there are four classes in the plane, but if you made every passenger fly in economy class, it could fit 853 passengers. And as you would expect from those statistics, this thing is massive. The wingspan is 261.8 feet and its height clocks in at 79.1 feet. It has four engines and two full passenger decks, so its interior measures 5,920 square feet — over twice the size of an average home.

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The Airbus A380 has an interesting history. It was first manufactured in 2007, and production ceased in 2021, a span of 14 years. This is because demand was far less than Airbus had originally predicted. Instead of sitting among ever-greater amounts of people in a plane, passengers were much more interested in being able to take faster, more direct routes. Passenger jets with incredibly long ranges, like the A380’s sister aircraft the Airbus A350, became much more en vogue. Also, the A380 faced strong competition from Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, which has a similarly large body, and costs far less to operate.

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Another hiccup came when travel slowed in the year 2020 with the rise of COVID-19. It’s no surprise that a plane with such a high capacity wasn’t as in demand when most people were avoiding travel due to the fear of spreading or contracting the illness. Airbus A380 planes were placed in the desert for storage during the early part of the pandemic, but came out of hibernation by the end of 2021, when travel increased sharply — part of why it’s still possible to catch a flight on an Airbus A380 to this day. 

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In its production heyday, the Airbus A380 was ordered 251 times by 14 different airlines. It’s most commonly seen in the Emirates fleet, as the airline purchased 123 of the aircraft, making it the largest customer. Between April 1, 2023 and the same date in 2024, FlightRadar24 reports, Emirates completed over 54,000 flights of the Airbus A380, over two-thirds of the total flights the aircraft took in that year. Many of those flights were going in or out of Dubai, the airline’s hub, so you can consider that the most likely place to find this aircraft.  

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Emirates outfits is Airbus A380s with private first-class cabins and shower spas, giving a luxury twist to a vehicle originally made for hub-to-hub commuter flights. But the airline also says it’s trying to become better for the environment. Airbus says the massive airplane performed a successful test flight in March 2022 using 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel that was primarily made of used cooking oil.

“Compared with conventional jet fuel,” says the U.S. Department of Energy, “100% SAF has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 94% depending on feedstock and technology pathway.” Airbus said in 2022 that all of its planes were certified to use a mixture of half sustainable fuel and half kerosene, with a goal of certifying them for 100% sustainable fuel by 2030.

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