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The Airbus A340 quadjet was once an icon of international travel, but in the era of high fuel prices and extremely reliable twinjets, it has become a ‘gas guzzler’ that is no longer in high demand with the mainline air carriers. At the same time, the four engines of the ‘heavy’ Airbus make it a valuable asset to certain operators, including air cargo and VIP or state missions.
Given the long production run and varying sizes of different models available on the market, depending on the age and configuration of the A340, these jets can be found for anywhere from $15 million to over $200 million, and some especially desirable outliers can be priced at about $300 million. In general, the most popular models are the A340-300 and A340-600. The -300 tends to cost an average of $219 million, according to Axon Aviation. Meanwhile, the A340-600 is priced at an average of $275 million.
The Fade Of Four-Engine Jets
For most major carriers, the A340 is no longer a viable long-haul option due to its quadjet design and the simple economics of fuel and operating cost. The A340 consumes significantly more fuel and requires higher maintenance than modern twinjet alternatives like the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 Dreamliner purely because it has twice as many engines.
The vast majority of operators that took original delivery from Airbus have retired their fleets from passenger service. A handful of lingering carriers like Lufthansa, Swiss, and Edelweiss are immediately planning to sunset the small number of airframes they still have in service. The relaxation of regulations that formerly restricted to an engine and aircraft on long transoceanic routes has essentially made quadjets unnecessary.
On the other hand, the production chokepoint created by the global aerospace industry lull during the COVID-19 pandemic has given a small second lease on life to four-engine airliners like the Airbus A340. With the absence of their successors on the flight line, these four-engine jets have continued to serve high-demand routes that require luxury cabin products or high-capacity seating.
Similarly, the much lower acquisition cost of an A340 that is secondhand or already in a carrier’s fleet is highly advantageous compared to purchasing a new next-generation widebody, as the global airline industry continues to recover from the long travel lockdown.
More Is More: VIP A340s
There is one segment of the aerospace industry in which quadjets continue to be in demand, which is VIP Air transport and government mission platforms that require four-engine airframes. This has seen the continued endurance of the Boeing 747, which is still enjoying a twilight career even as its younger counterpart, the Airbus A380 superjumbo, is nearing the end of its days with almost every carrier except one.
The extra thrust and electrical power generated by four engines is one element of the technical advantage that a quadjet has, which keeps it desirable to VIP and government customers. Then there is also the redundancy, which makes the aircraft more resilient to extremely demanding missions or damage simply because it has more power plants than a twinjet.
Four engines provide massive amounts of electrical and pneumatic power, which is necessary for the sophisticated, secure communication suites, anti-missile defense systems, and specialized electronics used by modern governments.
The A340 also offers one of the largest widebody cabins available, providing roughly 3,000 square feet of internal space. The massive fuselage allows for almost limitless interior layouts, including private master suites with en-suite bathrooms, boardrooms, and medical facilities. While typically seating 300+ for commercial use, VIP versions often carry 40–100 passengers. This allows a head of state to travel with a full staff of security, advisors, and press in a single, secure environment.
Since many commercial airlines are retiring A340s, private operators and government agencies can purchase these airframes at a fraction of their original cost. Because government jets fly fewer hours per year than commercial ones, the high fuel cost is offset by the low initial investment. Germany, Thailand, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran are all known to maintain A340s for head-of-state travel.
It’s 2025, But Why Do Some Airlines Still Love The Airbus A340?
How one quadjet has stuck around in the era of twins.
The Secondhand Quadjet Market
Only about 71 A340s remain in active service globally, with Lufthansa and Mahan Air being the largest remaining operators. Most retired A340s are sent to specialized long-term storage facilities, or aircraft ‘graveyards.’ For the oldest airframes, the value has fallen to scrap price levels, with engines and spare parts often worth more than the aircraft itself.
When an A340 is deemed no longer flight-worthy, it is selected for the dismantling process. High-value components like engines, landing gear, and avionics are removed, inspected, and sold as spare parts to support the remaining active global fleet. Up to 92% of the aircraft’s weight can be recycled. Aluminum, which makes up about 40% of the weight, is often melted down for use in the construction or automotive industries.
For many airlines, a retired A340 is most valuable as a parts donor. Carriers like Lufthansa use their maintenance division, Lufthansa Technik, to strip retired airframes to keep their remaining active A340s flying until their final phase-out. Still, the low purchase price of a ‘boneyard’ A340 is appealing to some customers who can find the planes a second life with small carriers.
Kam Air of Afghanistan and SpiceJet of India (occasionally) have both picked up used A340s to serve high-demand or niche routes, where the low purchase price helped compensate for low fuel efficiency. Iran’s Mahan Air has actively acquired retired A340s through secondary channels on the aerospace market owing to sanctions. The carrier has succeeded in adding aircraft to its fleet that were officially retired or stored in other countries.
Why Don’t Any US Airlines Fly The Airbus A340?
In the United States, the aircraft never aligned with the market’s priorities.
The Airbus Double Launch
The A340 was launched alongside its twin engine ‘sister ship,’ the A330. The original development program that led to the debut of these two legendary widebodies was one of the most ambitious programs in Aerospace history. Going back to the 1970s, Airbus aimed to expand its lineup following the success of the original A300. The A330 was meant to be a medium-range, high capacity twin aisle, while the A340 was specifically meant for transoceanic flying.
In a pioneering application of the principle of airframe commonality, Airbus designed both aircraft with the same wings, fuselage, and glass cockpit environment to make it easy for pilots to fly either aircraft. On top of that, simplicity on the flight deck, which benefited carriers and aircrew, the massive amount of shared parts saved hundreds of millions of dollars on the production line for Airbus. It also created a much more cost-effective and simple spare parts program to sustain the global fleet of both aircraft models.
Airbus officially launched both programs in 1987, just before that year’s Paris Air Show. The most critical driver for the A340’s four-engine design was the regulatory environment of the 1980s. At the time, market research showed a clear geographic divide. North American airlines preferred twinjets, while Asian carriers demanded four engines for long overwater flights.
In the 1980s, twin-engine jets were strictly limited by Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Performance Standards, or ETOPS. This initially barred them from flying more than 60 minutes from a diversion airport. The A340 was exempt from ETOPS, allowing it to fly direct routes over the middle of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans that twins simply couldn’t legally fly.
Why The Airbus A340 Won’t Be Retired Anytime Soon
The A340 is nearing the end of its commercial service, but still has meaningful impact in other sectors.
The Last Survivors
Lufthansa still has over 20 examples of the A340 in active service. Many of the A350-600s will be phased out this year, and the rest, as well as the A340-300s, are expected to be retired by 2028. The German airline has the largest fleet still on the flight line, and when they are phased out, the expected replacements will be a combination of the Next Generation Airbus A350 widebody and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
The long-fuselage variant, the A340-600, has survived primarily because it features a first class cabin, which is in high demand on routes between destinations like Frankfurt and New York (JFK), Washington DC, and Riyadh. The A340-300s still in mainline service fly routes from the Lufthansa Frankfurt hub to destinations including Boston, Vancouver, Mumbai, and Tehran.
Seat certification delays with the Boeing 787 Dreamliners that will replace the Lufthansa A340s have forced the airline to keep extending its retirement date. Compounding that, Lufthansa is the launch customer of Boeing’s next-gen 777X widebody, which is over half a decade behind schedule. CEO Carsten Spohr was quoted by ch-aviation as saying:
“On the delays, or additional delays on the 777X, we never expected the airplane to be in operation commercially in ’26…so we are scheduling the aircraft earliest summer ’27, so there’s no need yet to make any changes to our plans so far, and we’ll see where it goes from here,”
Iran’s Mahan Air has 15 airworthy examples of different variants from the A340 line, with no expected retirement date. SWISS still flies four A340-300s, Edelweiss Air has five -300s on the flightline, and Kam Air of Afghanistan has three of its own.
The aerospace trade sanctions against the Iranian regime force the airline to make every jet fly as long as possible until a severe breakdown permanently grounds it. The efforts to keep airplanes in the air include ‘cannibalizing’ grounded airframes and similar aircraft to assemble ‘Frankenstein’ A340s with parts cobbled together.
