The Global Airlines A380 takes off today, from Glasgow to New York

Well, today’s the day! Global Airlines, an airline start-up founded by travel influencer James Asquith, is finally taking to the skies.

The Global Airlines A380 will take off from Glasgow Airport at 11am today, heading to New York JFK. It will remain there until the return flight on 19th May.

(EDIT: The aircraft has successfully taken off, roughly on time, and is now on its way to JFK.)

A second flight will take place from Manchester to New York JFK from 21st to 25th May. What happens after that is not clear.

Global Airlines launched in 2023 when it announced it wanted to operate a fleet of A380s from London Gatwick to North America. It was an aggressive idea, given that many airlines are retiring A380s because they are difficult to fill and spare parts harder to source.

Initially Global Airlines wanted to launch its first transatlantic flights in the summer of 2024. This was always ambitious and, of course, never happened. Progress seemed slow, although the first aircraft did fly to Europe for a light refurbishment.

Global Airlines has now made it to the starting line.

Whilst it’s easy to pick holes in their project, the truth is that the majority of start-up airlines never even make it to their first flight. Who remembers our coverage of Hans Airways, which wanted to fly from Birmingham to India, or Fly Atlantic, which planned transatlantic services from Belfast?

Whilst there is a heck of a long way to go to turn two test flights into a regular scheduled service, the Global Airlines project is still moving.

Today’s flight will be operated by Hi Fly, the Portuguese wet lease operator contracted by Global Airlines to run its A380 services. This means that the flight crew and cabin crew will be provided by Hi Fly. Global Airlines does not have the necessary authorisations to operate its own flights – in fact, it doesn’t even authorisation to sell tickets, and had to use an agency to market the seats.

Pricing came down sharply from the initial quotes. Economy tickets, originally around £780, were being sold for £380 return last week. I think First Class was offered at £2,999 at one stage. Given that you had to commit to a four day stay – no longer, no shorter, unless you wanted to come back under your own steam – it should probably have been lower.

That said, today could, actually, be a great success.

Looking at the seat maps, ticket sales appear light. In some ways this is an opportunity. It won’t cost much to go all out on Krug and caviar to impress the journalists, influencers and aviation enthusiasts who have bought tickets.

Today could, of course, also be a mess.

Global has no Plan B, I suspect. If the A380 has a mechanical issue, there is no spare aircraft and the maintenance businesses at Glasgow are unlikely to be well stocked with A380 parts. The bad publicity would be a disaster.

It’s worth noting that the aircraft is not equipped with wi-fi. IFE will be ‘streamed directly to your own devices’ which implies that the IFE screens in the cabin will not be operable, and there are no power sockets in economy. On the upside, all passengers have been invited to a three hour reception at the TWA Hotel at JFK on arrival.

(For clarity, we were not offered a media ticket. We could have bought one, but the timing was difficult given other commitments. Would we have made it work if offered a seat? Potentially, if we could have used miles for a quick return.)

We wish James and his team good luck. We know some of the people on board (Simon Calder generously provided the photographs for this article which were taken yesterday – copyright is his, for clarity) and look forward to their reports.

PS. Simon Calder is live blogging (well, until take off as there is no wi-fi!): https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/global-airlines-new-york-flight-transatlantic-airline-live-updates-b2751351.html