I flew 14 hours nonstop in business class on the world's biggest passenger plane, the discontinued $446 million Airbus superjumbo jet, and it was even more luxurious than I could have imagined

Harrison Jacobs

February 21, 2019 7:37 PM

REUTERS/Christian Charisius

Good morning! My journey last week started in Dubai. Though it's my first time flying business class, I've been traveling for business for the last year, as evidenced by my very compact luggage (if I say so myself).

The Airbus A380 superjumbo, the largest and most expensive commercial airliner in history, turned out to be a failure, and Airbus announced this month it will stop producing the plane .
For my 14-hour flight to New York from Dubai , I decided to fly business class for $5,400 on an A380 operated by Emirates Airlines , Airbus's biggest A380 customer.
The flight was my first time flying business class. From the chauffeur service and extravagant pre-flight lounge to the inflight cocktail bar and spacious pod seat, it was unforgettable.
With business class far from full on my flight, it's clear why the A380 was not a success. As Business Insider's senior reporter Benjamin Zhang has written, the plane is " too big, expensive, and inefficient for most operators ."

With tickets costing thousands of dollars, it's never made sense for me to fly business class.

Until last week, that is, when Airbus announced that in 2021 it will stop producing the A380 , the largest and most expensive commercial airliner in history.

For most of the A380's decade in service, Airbus has struggled to find buyers. The exception to that isEmirates, an airline ranked as the Middle East's largest, the world's fourth largest, and rated the fourth best in the world . Operating over 100 A380s, Emirates delivered on the $445.6 million plane's promise of unprecedented luxury in air travel.

The second deck of Emirates' A380 is dedicated solely to first-class and business class. Each passenger gets a pod with a flatbed seat, a minibar, a tablet, and a widescreen television. There's even a dedicated lounge where flight attendants mix up cocktails.

For many travel junkies, flying business class on an A380 operated by Emirates is considered the crme de la crme of flight experiences.

With a 14-hour flight from Dubai International Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on the A380 scheduled, I ditched my economy ticket and booked a $5,400 business class ticket.

Here's what it was like.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider