The Airbus A380's 950-Gallon Paint Job Adds Up To 2,425 Pounds In Weight

Considering that the Airbus A380 has a 262-foot wingspan and a length of 239 feet, painting the double-deck airliner is a monumental task. It takes 950 gallons of paint to adequately cover the outside of the flying European behemoth. For comparison, it takes five gallons at most to paint a full-size SUV. While the paint can add up to 2,425 pounds to the A380's weight, Airbus went to great lengths to include composite materials in the plane's construction to reduce weight in other areas.

The largely white livery might convince you otherwise, but it's still a lengthy process to paint the Airbus A380. The planemaker would paint the planes after final assembly in a dedicated paint shop in Hamburg, Germany before delivering the behemoths to their customers. UAE flag carrier Emirates received nearly half of the 254 A380s ever built. According to Emirates, the paint process takes seven days and seven layers of paint over the 33,100-square-foot exterior. Each layer of paint is 0.0047 of an inch thick. It begins with a primer, followed by a sealer. Then, three coats of white paint in a shade custom to Emirates are applied. The final two layers are a clear coat, then the airline's logos and tailfin design.

Like most planes, an Airbus A380 isn't painted just once during its service life. As the largest operator of the A380 by an order of magnitude, Emirates is in a unique position to maintain its fleet of 116 double-deck planes. The Dubai-based carrier operates the world's largest airline-owned painting facility, the Emirates Aircraft Appearance Centre. Emirates says it repaints an A380 every seven to eight years of service. A strip and repaint job is obviously more time-consuming than painting an aircraft, taking 15 days. In terms of labor, it takes 34 workers almost 6,000 staff hours to complete.

While many feared that the proliferation of point-to-point airline routes would lead to the demise of the Airbus A380, the behemoth is getting a second wind due to the uptick in long-haul travel in recent years. Several airlines had mothballed their A380s in the arid Mojave Desert since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Reactivating these aircraft isn't an easy task either, taking 4,500 hours of maintenance to prepare the planes for service again.