Airbus Says First A380 F-WWOW Is Not Retired After 96-Minute Test Flight

F-WWOW, the first Airbus A380 built, flew a 96-minute circular test flight from and back to Toulouse-Blagnac Airport (TLS) in southwest France on Wednesday, October 28, 2026. Flightradar24 data shows it took off at 10:27 AM local time and landed at 12:03 PM. Reports then circulated that it had been the aircraft's last flight.

Airbus has said that is not the case. A spokesperson said that "the next steps for MSN1 (F–WWOW) are currently under study," as first reported by Airliner World. Airbus said that on October 28 the aircraft completed a flight test campaign equipped with upgrades, the kind of improvements the company carries out across all its aircraft. The flight was the last in that series of tests, not the end of the aircraft's career.

According to ch-aviation, F-WWOW is 21.52 years old and first flew on April 27, 2005. It has been owned by Airbus throughout its career and wears the Airbus factory livery, with a '50 Years' sticker added in 2019. The aircraft has had several storage periods: February 2017 to January 2019, September 2019 to January 2021, and May 2022 to March 2025. It is now back in storage.

F-WWOW has served as an experimental aircraft for more than two decades. It was central to Airbus's flight-test and certification work for the A380 series, later acted as a flying testbed for the A350's Rolls-Royce engines, and used Sustainable Aviation Fuel in 2022.

Airbus has previously hinted at using the A380 as a testbed for open-rotor engine technology. Commercial CEO Lars Wagner said this month: "we are thinking about the technology," adding that "we want to test fly it and make sure that this is generating the benefits that we currently anticipate."

A retirement rumour built on a single flight track shows how little a ferry or test sortie reveals about an aircraft's future. Airbus describes this one as the close of a test series fitted with upgrades, and a flight-tracking trace alone cannot distinguish that from a final departure.

For a manufacturer, an airframe that has carried certification work, engine trials and a fuel demonstration is a reusable asset, and the open-rotor comments suggest the A380 could be pulled into the next technology programme. The storage periods between campaigns, the most recent ending in March 2025, show such testbeds work in bursts rather than continuously.

The next dated signal is Airbus's own decision on what follows, which the spokesperson said is under study. Any announcement of a new test campaign, or of a disposal, would settle the question more reliably than tracking data.