NEW YORK: The world’s largest commercial passenger jet, the Airbus SE A380, enjoyed an unexpected resurgence hauling full loads of passengers when global travel rebounded after the pandemic.

But keeping the ageing superjumbo safely airborne is becoming an increasingly expensive headache for airlines.

Two decades after its maiden flight, regulatory bulletins ordering repairs, inspections or replacement parts for the massive four-engined plane are piling up.

While some are procedural, such as a demand for timely equipment checks, others are more serious.

Leaking escape slides, cracked seals and a ruptured landing-gear axle feature among 95 airworthiness directives for the A380 listed by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency since January 2020.

That’s about double the number of directives for large Boeing Co aircraft in the same period.

With newer, more fuel-efficient jets in short supply, airlines committed to the twin-deck A380 have little choice but to keep flying it.

In its youth, the A380 was a triumph of international collaboration, with four million parts made by 1,500 companies worldwide.

Now, in old age, the aircraft’s complexity is testing aviation’s fractured supply chains in the post-Covid era.

“The A380 is a complex aeroplane whose scale does make it more demanding to maintain compared to other aircraft,” the European Union Aviation Safety Agency said in a statement.

“It is very important for safety that there is no stigma attached to publishing an airworthiness directive: safety must come first.”

The agency said such directives, which mandate actions to make an aircraft safe, “can vary hugely in scope and urgency”.

The volume of airworthiness directives for different planes “is not a good basis for comparison”, it said.

However, with the capacity to carry 485 passengers or more, delays caused by mechanical failures can be costly and create a cascade of scheduling headaches.

A Qantas Airways Ltd A380 on the flagship Sydney-London route broke down in Singapore on May 7 with fuel pump problems.

The onward flight to London was pushed back more than 24 hours and passengers accommodated in hotels.

That was at least the second fuel pump issue to delay QF1 in Singapore since Qantas reactivated its A380s.

More recently, Qantas passengers who were due to depart Singapore on July 14 for Sydney on an A380 were delayed for days because of technical difficulties.

Plans to retrieve them sooner were complicated by damage to another A380 at Sydney airport, when an aerobridge slammed into one of the engines.

A British Airways A380, G-XLEB, recently spent more than 100 days in Manila.

After returning to London Heathrow in mid-June, it flew just seven days of the next 30, according to Flightradar24.

Still, IAG SA-owned British Airways from next year will embark on an interior upgrade programme, including overhauling A380 cabins, suggesting the airline will keep flying the plane for years.

For airlines using the A380, large capacity alternatives are scarce.

Boeing’s new 777X is years behind schedule and Airbus can’t make long-haul A350s fast enough. Meanwhile, A380 operators are left with an out-of-production superjumbo that will only become more needy and more expensive to run.

In online aviation forums, some services are gaining a name for breakdowns, cancellations or overnight delays.

In a statement, Airbus said the A380 “continues to operate scheduled services with a high level of operational reliability, standing at 99% for the global fleet over the past 12 months.

“Airbus is committed to providing full technical support to customers to ensure that they can optimise operations with their A380 fleets, and this will continue as long as the aircraft remains in service.”

Meanwhile, A380s are taking up space and manpower in workshops around the world, exacerbating a shortage of repair facilities for the wider commercial fleet.

A comprehensive check of the massive plane can consume 60,000 hours of labour, according to aircraft repairer Lufthansa Technik.

Qantas is sending some double-deckers to Dresden in Germany to be overhauled.

British Airways flies its to Manila for repairs and Emirates, the world’s biggest operator of A380s, maintains some in China.

Some of the aircraft’s recent faults stem from prolonged periods on the ground during the pandemic, when airlines parked their A380s in the Californian desert, central Spain or the Australian outback. — Bloomberg