Charles, a 69-year-old retiree who wore a navy blue polo shirt with the A330 Neo logo, left empty-handed. The inexhaustible connoisseur of aeronautics coveted for his son, an engineer at Airbus, the three luminous emergency exit panels of an A380 whose parts had been auctioned since Thursday, October 13, in Toulouse. Estimated at 80 euros, these small objects passed under his nose at the price of 310 euros.
Benoît, an architect-designer in his forties, didn’t come for nothing. In its basket, four plastic side luggage compartment covers and three fuselage trim panels. All for the sum of 1,800 euros. “I had a budget of 4,000 euros, and it was out of the question that I leave empty-handed”, warns the creator of objects, who had prepared for this sale. In a small notebook, he had noted, beforehand, in pencil, the elements sought at affordable prices. “What interests me is the history of the object, the shape and its material”he justifies himself. “But this plane or another, for me, it’s the same. »
Flashlights, electrical equipment in the cockpit, baby bed, washbasin, electric coffee machine, sliding shelf, Captain’s mini-stick… Five hundred pieces, which mainly come from the aircraft cabin, were put up for sale under the hammer blows of the auctioneer Marc Labarbe.
Installed behind the bar of the business cabin – the centerpiece, estimated between 2,000 and 3,000 euros – he animated, like an orchestra conductor, the auction. Entering service in October 2008, this A380, an example numbered MSN13, was operated by Emirates. Withdrawn from the airline’s fleet during the Covid-19 pandemic, the aircraft was then dismantled in 2021 by the company Tarmac Aerosave, a subsidiary of Airbus, located near Tarbes (Hautes-Pyrénées) then sold to Airbus.
“Smart Recycling”
Since October 2007, date of entry into service of the first copy of the jumbo jet to Singapore Airlines, the manufacturer has delivered 251 A380s. While its production was definitively stopped in December 2021, this auction comes at a time when the aircraft is regaining interest with airlines: Lufthansa, Qatar Airways and even British Airways are gradually returning their aircraft to service.
“We wanted to allow aeronautics lovers to leave with a piece of this device”, explains Sophie de Lacroix, an Airbus employee and project manager for this sale, the proceeds of which will be donated to the foundation of the aircraft manufacturer, which finances humanitarian operations. AIRitage, an association that acts to safeguard aeronautical heritage by storing, for example, archives, photos and pilots’ patents, will pocket 30% of the total sum.
“With this sale, we are recycling intelligently”welcomes Jacques Rocca, member of the board of directors of AIRitage. “With the amount, we will be able to fit out the interior of an A380 MSN4. This test aircraft, which landed at Le Bourget [près de Paris], in February 2017, will be open to the public in 2024.” This is not the first time that Airbus has dismantled its planes. Already in 2007, the aircraft manufacturer had put 900 lots of Concorde on sale. This operation raised 800,000 euros.