Etihad Airways recorded 99.8% reliability in its first year of operating the Airbus A380-800, the best performance level of any airline to have introduced the aircraft, the carrier said after receiving the Airbus Operational Reliability Performance award. The 0.2% of reliability problems in the January-December 2015 period did not include any cancellations, the Abu Dhabi-based carrier added.

Etihad SVP-technical Jeff Wilkinson said the airline’s performance came down to “the sheer hard work and commitment … of our engineering teams.” He noted the airline also had one of the highest rates of daily utilization of the A380, with a typical turnaround time of only two hours, which underlined its achievement.

Wilkinson said preparations for the A380’s service entry started more than a year before the initial delivery in December 2014, with a cross-functional entry into service team that included representatives from technical operations, logistics, flight operations and other divisions of the airline. This team was responsible for rewriting procedures, training pilots, cabin crew and engineers, provisioning parts and tools, and implementing new technologies to support the new aircraft.

Etihad’s first A380 made its debut on the Abu Dhabi-London Heathrow route in December 2014. There are now six A380s in the Etihad fleet, with four more scheduled for delivery.