Airbus A380 REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol

The Airbus A380 is the largest passenger and most expensive airliner in the world.

The superjumbo has now been in service for more than a decade.

Airbus has booked just 290 orders for the plane and has struggled to find buyers — 239 of those orders have been delivered as of July 2019.

The A380 is too big, expensive, and inefficient for most operators.

Earlier this year, Airbus announced it will end production of the A380 in 2021. Meanwhile, the first few A380s have already been pulled from service, including a quiet retirement for an Air France jet in November, 2019.

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The end is looming for the Airbus A380, following Airbus‘ announcement earlier this year that it will end production of the double-decker in 2021.

Things were much different back in 2007 when the Airbus A380 entered service to great fanfare. The gargantuan jet, dubbed the superjumbo, was designed to take everything that made the Boeing 747 an icon and push it to the limits of modern engineering.

The superjumbo hasn’t been the game changer Airbus had hoped it would become when the massive jet was conceived two decades ago. This is especially the case on the financial front.

For much of the plane’s life, Airbus has struggled to find airlines willing to put the A380 into service.

With a price tag of $445.6 million, the A380 is one of the most expensive and lavish airplanes ever built. With room for as many as 800 passengers, the double-decker’s sheer size means it’s an occasion whenever a superjumbo arrives.

Read more: The $446 million Airbus A380 is the largest and most expensive airliner in the world. Take a look inside.

But in a cost-conscious market and with fluctuating fuel prices, the very attributes that made the plane stand out may have also doomed it. Some say the A380 came two decades too late, while others say that with increasing airport congestion, the plane is ahead of its time.

Some industry observers, such as the Teal Group analyst Richard Aboulafia, have gone so far as to call it the biggest mistake in the history of Airbus. According to Aboulafia, the A380 is a poorly executed aircraft designed for a market that doesn’t really exist. As a result, the $25 billion that Airbus spent on the A380 program could have been better used elsewhere, like on a rival for Boeing’s next-generation 777X or on a true replacement for the aging Boeing 757, Aboulafia told Business Insider.

„It’s painful, but in the long run, it’s best,“ Aboulafia said regarding the end of the A380 production run.

Thus, production ends with just 290 planes. Airbus has already delivered 239 A380s. Only 50 A380 are yet to be delivered.

The plane is a polarizing machine, with some viewing it as an eye-sore, and others as a testament to the marvels of modern engineering.

Here’s a look at the topsy-turvy history of the Airbus A380 superjumbo.

This story was originally published by Benjamin Zhang in November 2017. It was updated on November 25, 2019.

The end is near for the Airbus A380 superjumbo jet. Here’s how it went from airline status symbol to reject in just 10 years

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