Recently I wrote about how Air France were sending some Airbus A380s for scrap in Ireland. The first aircraft arrived at Knock Airport yesterday, 20 February 2020.
Considering the airport sees the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 as its main equipment, this landing is quite the event. Happily just about anyone interested in aviation in the area turned out for the big event.
Knock Airport A380 Landing Video
The video below runs for a little over five minutes. Both a Ryanair flight to Liverpool and an Aer Lingus service to London Gatwick depart in the beginning. This illustrates the usual jets using the facility.
From about 1 minute and 30 seconds in, the ex-Air France Airbus A380 descends into Knock Airport. You get a real feel for the size of the beast in the clip.
Another historic day for @Irelandwest as we welcomed the worlds biggest passenger aircraft, the @Airbus #A380 to the airport today for parking and storage. The biggest aircraft ever to land at the airport. Here is the footage of the aircraft landing on our famous runway 🙌🙌✈️✈️ pic.twitter.com/kEyK1Qhxd3
— Ireland West Airport (@Irelandwest) February 20, 2020
Ireland West Airport, as it is officially known, also posted a video on their Twitter feed above. This shows the landing from the opposite side, so you can have that feeling of truly having been there.
One More Video
Those into portrait mode videos, or who are watching on their phone, might prefer this one. Whoever did this actually uploaded it first to YouTube, and possibly even faster than the airport.
It’s always good to see people sharing these moments so quickly. Those of us who can’t be there get to vicariously experience it as a result and I like that.
Overall Thoughts
While seeing such a large and complex machine heading for the scrap heap is never the best, it is still a cause for celebration for Ireland West Airport. It is possible more of Airbus A380s will also go here for spares recovery.
Were you at Knock Airport to see the landing? What do you think of the videos? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image via Irish Times.
Flew three flights on a Qantas A380 (First Class, thanks to a bunch of AA points) as part of a trip Down Under a few years ago. I know Qantas doesn’t have the most innovative hard product among A380 First Class operators, but getting to do it aboard such a large, stately aircraft was still a memorable experience, A real shame many of these smooth-flying big birds are already in the latter stages of their commercial life.
Awesome that you got to fly Qantas First Class. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and yet haven’t managed to do as yet. It would have been some experience, for sure! Definitely a shame many of them are being retired, but passengers want more direct flights rather than going via hubs, so the customer is ultimately to blame, in a way.
Neat! Loved that there was a lineup of people capturing it, was this publicized in local media beforehand? Or is that crowd a daily occurrence?!
Oh that crowd definitely isn’t a daily occurrence at all! I’d say they were all out to see the Airbus A380, Knock is hardly in a built up urban area. I’d say it was on local media for that many people to be there!