The A380 flies! Its exciting news for sure...whether or not its good or bad is up for grabs Image Unavailable, Please Login
so far I know that Brit and air franc UPS and fedex have planes on order. should be in passenger service within a year. I think she a beaut !!
Your really like it Perry? I think they got the Bus part right. Given this is a Ferrari site, shouldn't we be rooting for the days of the money/gas burning, completley pointless but what a rush and feeling type of plane such as the Concorde? Come on Boeing, get that SST back in gear! RocketBoy
I had to fly BA (british) from Orlando to London and then to Lusaka, Zambia..... 14 hours each leg cramped in coach knees hitting the back of the front seat.....crappy food.........man a plane like this where they are going to have a bar and possibly a casino, place to walk about......that is the best thing to happen to air travel since the mile high club.........imagine all the places you can experience the mile high club on that thing...........
Only the first class and business class passengers can use the casinos and bars. Coach isn't allowed to. The first commercial plane to go into service will be for Singapore Airlines and it will be Spring 2006.
Unless you plan on upgrading your ticket to business or 1st class, not much is going to change for you.
Checking : 2 hours Boarding : 1 hour Deboarding : 1 Hour Picking luggages : 1 hour God..i need a private Jet
While the A380 is impresive in size and (probably) equally impresive in flight. Despite all of the publicized speculation, I am fairly sure that Boeing is not shaking just yet. As one of my biggest customers and understanding some of the future development paths for the 777 and 747-400 series I would bet that Boeing is just fine with their current fleet of air craft. After all Air Canada just placed an order for 96 (yes thats 96) 777's and 787's (the new Dreamliner platform set to replace the aging 757 and augment the 767 platform). GO BOEING! Sorry.. I'm a bit of a boeing enthusiast..
I really hope Airbus can pull that off. It would make great strides in commercial air travel. Glad to see Boeing have some competition.
Out of interest, what nationality was the pilot? I remember there being a big fuss about who got to fly it first!
no airports that i know of are logisticly prepaired for this airplane. can any one say "bottle neck"? delay, delay, delay nice jet though. the spruce goose was cool too...
All this BS talk about the plane having casino's and bar is precisely that. BS How to make money in the Airline Industry: Move people from place to place. How to make the most money in the Airline Industry: Move as many people from place to place How to have an advantage by buying the A380: Carry the most people from place to place How the A380's layout will be inside on most airlines: Seats Seats Seats!!= Money Money Money!! While there may be Casino's and all that BS on the first ones made, watch them phase that out. They are taking up valuable "seat space" eg. money. Case in point: Boeing 747. (Had Piano's etc... when first made)
Who knows if all that heavy stuff will make it into a delivered airplane. They had to spend over an extra billion during development to try and solve that plane's weight problem. Then again, it could be that stuff is lighter than passenger load. If so, watch for casinos, bars, etc. in business class. Aside from being bigger, I don't see it revolutionizing air travel. The only thing it will do is relieve some stress on Asian routes, which tend to be packed. Plus, you still have to get all those people on and off the plane. "Now boarding Deck 2, rows 110-150..."
If there have been 248 confirmed orders for these babies, from Major airlines around the world., im sure that the purchasing airline would have done its research. They will want to have it made so that it can fly with a full 2 decks of seats. To add to that, im pretty sure that the weight trials for the plane had the interior decked out with seats. Hint Hint as to why they would of done that?? Thats the way the majority will be ordered.
An informative article: -- TOULOUSE, France, April 27 - With a whisper more than a roar, the largest passenger airliner ever built, the Airbus 380, took off on its maiden flight today, Europe's newest competitor in the battle with the Boeing Company. The airliner's four engines lifted the 421 metric-ton giant aloft at about 10:29 a.m. as hundreds watched at the Blagnac airport here. After nearly four hours, the Airbus landed at company headquarters outside the city of Toulouse in southern France. French President Jacques Chirac immediately hailed the "total success of the first test flight of the Airbus A380." In a statement released by his office soon after the airliner landed, Mr. Chirac said "a new page of aeronautical history has been written." "It is a magnificent result for European industrial cooperation and an encouragement to pursue this path of building a Europe of innovation and progress." In the morning, the crowds cheered as the huge double-deck plane rotated skyward at its takeoff speed of about 170 miles per hour. The plane seemed almost to hover as it lifted off and climbed. "The takeoff went perfectly," Alain Garcia, an Airbus engineering executive, told the LCI television station in Paris. Its comparative lack of noise was the result of demands by customers that Airbus make the plane even more quiet than it already was, a process that took six months. The A380 is designed to carry 555 passengers in three classes, but it can be expanded to 800 seats. The plane intended to stay within 100 miles of Toulouse, in southwest France, and maintain relatively low altitudes. Takeoff weight was 421 metric tons, compared with the current maximum takeoff weight of 560 tons. It landed at Blagnac after a flight lasting nearly four hours. The six-man test crew, dressed in orange jumpsuits, climbed into the plane at 8:40 a.m. The A380 is about one-third larger than its next-largest competitor, the Boeing 747, which sold well for 35 years but is now down to only a few sales a year. So far, Airbus has 154 firm orders for the A380, 27 of them for the freighter version. The plane is scheduled to enter service for Singapore Airlines in the second half of 2006. By far the largest order is for 43 of the planes by Emirates airline, based in Dubai. No American airlines have ordered any A380's, and none is expected to do so any time soon. This week, Air Canada said it had firm orders for 32 new Boeing jets, including 14 787's, with a list value of about $6 billion, and Air India announced plans to order 50 Boeing jets worth $6.8 billion. Air India wants 27 of the 787's, which will carry up to 257 passengers and have a list price of $120 million, bringing total orders and commitments for the plane to 237. The 787, which was launched a year ago, is scheduled to enter service in 2008. Airbus says the A380 will produce half as much noise at takeoff as the 747. Airbus also stresses the plane's fuel efficiency, claiming that a customer driving a compact car to the airport will burn more fuel per mile than the A380 requires to move one passenger 100 miles.A team of Airbus specialists has visited major airports over the p ast few years to determine how much work will be necessary to allow the A380 to use runways and terminals. Airbus claims the cost will be relatively small despite initial reports of huge costs. Most of those costs would be necessary anyway as airports modernize, rather than as a direct result of the A380, Airbus says. Willie-Pierre Dupont, the Airbus director of infrastructure and environment, said he and his team had visited the 60 airports worldwide where the A380 might land, and have found that it will be easier than most airports originally thought to accommodate the A380. Most A380 traffic will go into just 25 of those airports, Mr. Dupont said. However, Airbus says that in the next 20 years the number of airports that could support A380 flights will grow substantially. --
Its a nice plane. Huge, 800 passengers they say. I would hope to fly one some day. I think the Boeing 787 is more trying to be a speeder than a huge passenger jet. I think it is supposed to carry (X) amount of passengers, and take them from JFK to Heathrow in (X) amount of time, going (X) rate of speed, while looking good doing it. where as the A380 is like: Ok, we are going to pack on 800 or so passengers, fly them from JFK to Heathrow in 13 hours, going medium speed. But also be the largest plane in the world.
I just had a sick thought (not rare), look at the picture of this thing, can you imagine going down the emergency ecsape slide from the top level? .........\ ..........\ ............\ ..............\ ................\ .................\ ...................\ .....................\ .......................\ .........................\ ..........................\ ........................... \ ............................. \ . ...............................\ ...................................\ ....................................\ -------------------------- =-----------------------------
Speaking of large planes, why not built more on this AN225 ? The plane is HUGE and if converted into a commercial airliner can easily fit 1000-1200. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
