Airbus A380 transatlantic flights fall sharply for early 2026

In early 2025, Lufthansa operated its A380s on routes to Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, New York JFK, and Washington Dulles. As of October 22nd scheduling data, these services have been replaced with Airbus A350-900s configured without first class. Industry observers suggest these changes could be placeholders as Lufthansa refines its summer timetable and that "the A380 is exceptionally likely to be used on some or all of the five routes next summer."

The current schedule for January through June 2026 lists eight US-Europe routes with regular A380 service. British Airways plans five such routes—Heathrow-Boston (daily), Heathrow-Dallas/Fort Worth (daily starting May), Heathrow-Los Angeles (daily), Heathrow-Miami (twice daily in winter; daily in summer), and Heathrow-San Francisco (daily). This matches its offering from early 2025 but includes Dallas/Fort Worth instead of Washington Dulles.

Emirates continues its daily Dubai-Milan Malpensa-New York JFK route with an updated four-class configuration featuring first class and premium economy seats.

Lufthansa's Munich-Los Angeles and Munich-San Francisco flights will operate daily with the A380 until mid-January and resume again in March.

A notable change involves British Airways discontinuing its A380 service to Washington Dulles after November 7th, 2025. The carrier had previously operated this route since introducing the aircraft there in 2014—with interruptions during pandemic years—but now plans to serve Dulles using Boeing and Dreamliner models throughout early 2026 as it retrofits older cabins on its superjumbo fleet.