Malaysia Airlines is the latest international carrier to add the Airbus A380 to its fleet. The airline has already started flying a service three times a week between London and Kuala Lumpur. The superjumbo is the first of six on order and Malaysia Airlines said that it will ramp up its London to Kuala Lumpur schedule to once a day when the second A380 is delivered in August.

All of the superjumbos will have a configuration of 494 seats over first, business and economy class. The lower deck has been given over to economy and there are 70 economy seats on the upper deck as well as 66 business class seats. The first class cabin has eight seats.

Air France currently has the most seats on its A380s with 538. Korean Air has the least with 407.

The A380 was first flown commercially in 2007 by Singapore Airlines. However, since then the aircraft has not been without its problems. Concerns were raised over fleets flying with Rolls-Royce engines after a dramatic explosion ripped a hole in the engine casement on an A380 being flown from Singapore to Sydney by Qantas.

The incident caused the Australian flag carrier to ground its entire superjumbo fleet until tests could be carried out on all of the aircraft. More recently a design problem has caused fine cracks to appear in the wings of some superjumbos, a fault which Airbus has been called in to fix.