Sky Talk: A380s leaving DFW aren’t exactly full of passengers, local aviation website says

By Andrea Ahles

(Sky Talk)- It looks like the double-decker A380s leaving out of Dallas/Fort Worth Airport aren’t exactly full of passengers when they depart.

According to this blog post by DFWTower.com, the Emirates Airline flight to Dubai had an 38 percent for its load factor for its first full month of operation with the A380. Qantas Airways, which operates the only nonstop to Sydney, has about a 76 percent load factor on its A380 route.

DFWTower.com took traffic statistics provided by DFW Airport for the month of October and compared them to the available capacity on those routes to calculate load factors.

Here’s what blogger Greg Gayden noticed about Emirates: “This is a carrier that was consistently in the 90% range during their time at DFW; the addition of Qatar to the mix and the big increase in capacity with the A380 have brought loads down drastically.”

Qatar launched daily service to Doha in July and earlier this week, Etihad Airways started three-times-a-week service to Abu Dhabi.

At DFW Airport’s board meeting this week, airport chief executive Sean Donohue noted that passenger traffic to Europe had dropped 8 percent in October which the airport attributed to more travelers using the Gulf carriers to connect to destinations in the Indian subcontinent and Africa instead of connecting through Europe.

Originally published on star-telegram.com: A380s leaving DFW aren’t exactly full of passengers, local aviation website says

americans4fairskies2015Sky Talk: A380s leaving DFW aren’t exactly full of passengers, local aviation website says