China Southern Airlines denies reports on A380 losses

China Southern Airlines, the world’s sixth-largest airline by passenger volume, Monday refuted a Chinese media report which claimed the company suffered huge losses from its A380 super jumbo due to a high vacancy rate, Global Times reported. ”The fact is that we sold an average of some 92 percent of the 506 seats on the A380 since its operation,” Yang Defeng, a spokesman of China Southern Airlines, told the Global Times. The airline was the first to operate an A380 in China after the plane’s delivery on October 15, 2011. Powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines, the plane was mainly operated on the domestic routes between major cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. ”The A380 suffered huge losses as the airline could only fill about 80 of its more than 300 economy seats,” an unnamed source of the company was quoted Sunday by Beijing-based Investor Journal, a weekly newspaper, as saying. China Southern will continue to expand its services on international routes and the company plans to buy 40 to 45 more aircrafts this year, bringing its fleet size to 444 by the end of this year, the newspaper said, citing the source.