Airbus 380 LufthansaLufthansa Airbus 380 airplane model. Airbus first began studies on a very large 500 seat airliner in the early 1990s. The European manufacturer saw developing a competitor and successor to the Boeing 747 as a strategic play to end Boeing's dominance of the very large airliner market and round out Airbus' product line up. Airbus began engineering development work on such an aircraft, then designated the A3XX, in June 1994. Airbus studied numerous