All-A380 Carrier Global Airlines Offers ‘VIP Pre-Sales Reservations’ but no Actual Tickets

The startup airline aiming to begin flights between the U.S. and the U.K. this year with an all Airbus A380 livery, Global Airlines, has announced that it’s taking reservations for its first flights. While this is undoubtedly good news for competition in air travel, we are still a long way from Global starting scheduled services — or even selling actual tickets.

Here’s what we know about Global Airlines.

Global Airlines Launches Its First Flights, Sort of

Global Airlines is a new airline that intends to begin flying this year between London’s Gatwick airport (LGW) and the U.S., serving New York-JFK and Los Angeles (LAX).

The airline originally announced the start of commercial flights for 2024, but pushed it back to 2025. What makes Global Airlines peculiar is that it plans to fly only Airbus A380s, the giant double deckers that major airlines like Air France and China Southern retired. Those planes were both too big and too expensive to operate.

And now, Global has begun taking reservations — well, not quite reservations but emails intended to “reserve your seat by getting a place on the VIP pre-sales reservations list” for the inaugural flights. That’s what Global said on Monday in a post on LinkedIn, specifying that this isn’t yet a booking of an actual flight but rather the chance to “be one of the very first people to be invited to buy a ticket.”

Those wouldn’t be the flights it eventually intends to operate across the Atlantic, either. The LinkedIn post sends readers to a third-party site explaining that the first flight will be from Glasgow, Scotland (GLA) to JFK on May 15, followed by a flight in the reverse direction on May 19. Then, a flight from Manchester (MAN) is scheduled for May 21 with the return on May 25.

What We Know (and What We Don’t) About the Launch of Global Airlines

It may seem like madness to start an airline from scratch using the biggest passenger plane in the world and going against giants on the most competitive international business route, but that’s exactly what Virgin Atlantic did in 1984. Starting with a single Boeing 747 between London and New York, it’s grown into a major airline and member of the SkyTeam alliance.

Global CEO James Asquith, who made his money with U.K.-based home-sharing site Holiday Swap, certainly has the enthusiasm to match Virgin’s founder, Richard Branson. And the planes will feature interiors designed by the same company behind the onboard lounges on Virgin’s own Airbus A350s.

But at this stage, what makes Global Airlines harder to believe in than Virgin is that it’s moving in an apparently haphazard manner.

The site handling the sort-of-reservations is run by a third party called GA Flights, a trading name of British-based online travel agency Travelopedia, which has terrible reviews on TripAdvisor with 2 out of 5 stars. Confidence isn’t bolstered by other sections of the site, either, with weirdly stilted English including a page advising, “For queries regarding flight bookings feel free to call our customer care executive as per your convenience” — with no phone number to be found.

This could be attributed to Global being a startup outsourcing some of the work it doesn’t yet have enough staff for. However, it’s been around for 5 years, and booking flights is a core business function at any airline, newborn or otherwise.

What’s harder to explain is the inaugural schedule. Leaving an airplane on the ground for 4 days is hardly a recipe for profit. An A380 parked at JFK for that long will pay tens of thousands of dollars in fees. Other long-haul airlines leave planes parked overnight, at most. In other words, every minute planes spend on the ground is a minute spent bleeding money.

Then there’s the cost of keeping an A380 crew, which can be more than 20 people, in one of the world’s most expensive cities for 4 nights. Those crews are from Maltese operator Hi Fly Malta, which operates the plane for Global. It’s not clear when Global will start flying with its own crews, which it has been hiring.

We do know some intriguing pieces of information, like the offer to match the status passengers may have with competitors. “When you come to book your first flight with us this year, we will status match your existing tier with any OneWorld, Star Alliance, Sky Team, or other major airline for 2 years,” Global said. The airline will have 5 status tiers — Platinum, Titanium, Gold, Silver, and Bronze — and status matching for 2 years is unique. And the airline also teased that it will have caviar in business class, not just first. That’s another rarity.

But that’s all virtual for now because we also don’t know when the actual scheduled services will start.

The World’s Only Secondhand Airbus A380s

According to fleet-tracking site Planespotters, the lone A380 in Global’s fleet is a 2013 build with Rolls Royce engines, which flew until November 2022 with China Southern Airlines.

When the Chinese carrier retired all its A380s, this plane was stored in the Mojave desert in California, where the dry air prevents corrosion, until April 2024. It was then taken over by Global. Its Chinese past is evident, though, in the stripes it carries on the lower fuselage. They are still the livery worn by China Southern’s fleet.

Another A380 is due soon, according to Planespotters: a former Singapore Airlines jet built in 2008.

The minimum fleet size required to sustain a daily schedule from London to New York and Los Angeles, with 1 flight per day to each destination, is 3 airplanes. Global may have to run a less ambitious schedule than that until its fleet grows.

Final Thoughts

Global Airlines has displayed ambitions as large as the airplanes it chose to fly, but so far it hasn’t sold a flight. This may be about to change.

In the meantime, we’ve sent an email to book one of the Global Airlines flights announced for May, from Manchester to New York. We will report back when we know more.