In a blizzard of dry ice, operatic music and multi-ethnic dancing, the world’s largest passenger plane made its first public appearance at a vast airfield on the outskirts of Toulouse on Tuesday.
Bathed in soft purple light, the Airbus A380 ”superjumbo” dwarfed a crowd of 5 000 guests including Tony Blair and his fellow heads of government from France, Germany and Spain.
The doubledecker aircraft, which can carry up to 850 passengers, and has a wingspan of 90m, is billed as the biggest development in mass market air travel since the introduction of the Boeing 747 in 1969.
Virgin Atlantic, which has ordered six of the planes, is planning to use the extra space for in-flight gyms, beauty salons and casinos. Other airlines, including Emirates, intend to install showers and private rooms for first-class passengers.
With Welsh-made wings, a German fuselage and a Spanish tail, the aircraft is regarded as a symbol of European industrial cooperation. Its completion is a huge boost to Airbus in its long-running transatlantic battle with the United States’s Boeing to be the world’s top manufacturer of passenger aircraft.
Blair described the superjumbo as ”simply stunning” and said it marked ”an unprecedented level of industrial cooperation between European countries”.
The French president, Jacques Chirac, went further, praising a ”truly magnificent endeavour” and calling for closer European integration: ”To our partners, I say we must go further down this European path which is so vital for growth, for prosperity and well-being.”
Airbus has devoted five years and about 79-billion euros to the superjumbo project, which is running 1,4-billion euros over budget. The British government has invested £580-million (831-million euros), which will be more than paid back if the plane is a success.
Britain’s BAE Systems owns a fifth of Airbus. Many airlines have chosen to fit Rolls-Royce engines to their A380s. The British manufacturer said the power of one A380 taking off would be equivalent to 3 500 family cars.
An estimated 20 000 British workers are involved in the project. To date, however, orders are well short of break-even. Airbus needs to sell 250 of the aircraft, which have a catalogue price of $260-million each, to regain its costs. Airlines have only committed themselves to 149.
The United States’s cash-strapped airlines are yet to order any A380s. British Airways has so far ignored pressure to sign up, as have Japan’s airlines.
Experts are split on its prospects for success. Chris Tarry of the aviation research firm CTAIRA, said it would help long-haul airlines squeeze more passengers through limited landing slots at congested airports such as Heathrow and Tokyo’s Narita terminal.
Stretched
But he pointed out that many carriers were already financially stretched: ”You shouldn’t naturally assume that everyone who has 747s is going to want to replace them with A380s.”
British travellers will be among the first to get a taste of the new aircraft. Singapore Airlines, the A380’s lead customer, announced that its inaugural service next year would be between London, Singapore and Sydney on the so-called ”kangaroo” route to Australia.
Singapore’s chief executive, Cheong Choong Kong, said the A380’s name was auspicious in Chinese: ”The number 38 sounds like the words ‘growth and prosperity’.”
In common with many other airlines, Singapore only intends to carry around 500 people on the A380 — a fifth more than can fit on a jumbo jet. Rather than packing the plane with 850 economy seats, carriers are keen to introduce extended first and business-class facilities.
Virgin Atlantic has delayed its £1,5-billion superjumbo order until late 2007. It is worried that many airports, including Gatwick and Los Angeles, will take years to adapt their facilities to handle the aircraft.
Airports have had to invest heavily in improvements. Heathrow’s operator, BAA, is spending £450-million on widening its taxiways, strengthening its runways and building bigger piers for embarking passengers.
Virgin’s chairperson, Sir Richard Branson, said that with casinos and private double beds on board, customers on his superjumbos would have ”two chances to get lucky”.
He seized the opportunity to attack British Airways for ”buying American, rather than buying European” in its insistence on sticking with Boeing 747s.
”To be perfectly honest, it would be quite nice if BA were to buy some A380s as well — because it would support British aerospace and it would support Europe,” Branson said.
Quieter
The new aircraft is more fuel-efficient and quieter than its predecessors. Airlines say it is environmentally friendly because it will carry more passengers, precluding the need for more takeoffs and landings.
But green campaigners have given it a cool reception.
Richard Dyer of Friends of the Earth said: ”It’s positive that aircraft are getting more efficient. But the technological progress is not happening fast enough — growth in air travel is outstepping the improvements.”
The anti-Heathrow noise campaign group Hacan ClearSkies said although it was quieter than a traditional jumbo jet, the A380 would only just meet new international noise standards, to be introduced next year. Hacan’s chairperson, John Stewart, said: ”If this isn’t used to reduce the overall number of planes landing at airports, it will be a missed opportunity.”
Airlines see the opportunity differently. They regard the A380 as a way to lay on extra capacity for pent-up demand.
Lufthansa’s boss, Wolfgang Mayrhuber, pointed out that the US and Europe account for a small percentage of the world’s population but a large percentage of airline passengers: ”That shows we’re only at the very beginning of air transport.”
Geoff Dixon, chief executive of the Australian national airline, Qantas, said the Antipodes would be brought closer by the new plane. He said it would stimulate renewed travel by ”conquering the tyranny of distance” for far-flung, isolated countries.
By 2016, enthusiasts expect one in eight aircraft at Heathrow airport to be superjumbos, enabling up to 10-million more people to travel without extra flights.
Wings for the superjumbo are built in a £350-million factory in Broughton, Wales. They are hauled to Airbus’s assembly plant in Toulouse by barge, ship and lorry.
Airbus’s A380 assembly hall incorporates 32 000 tonnes of steel, the equivalent of four Eiffel towers.
The superjumbo is 12% more fuel-efficient than an ordinary jumbo jet and can fly 10% further.
Emirates Airlines is the biggest customer to date, with an order for 45 superjumbos under a plan to develop Dubai as an international travel hub.
The first European airline to operate the A380 will be Air France, which intends to use the superjumbo for services from Paris to New York and Montreal in summer 2007.
The first flight will be operated by Singapore Airlines in 2006 between London, Singapore and Sydney.
Airbus is considering making a ”stretch” version of the plane, which could carry as many as 1 000 passengers.
The superjumbo has a range of 8 000 nautical miles, sufficient to go from London to Tokyo. But it cannot go as far as Airbus’s smaller A340-500, which can go non-stop from London to Perth.
Each superjumbo will undergo more than 1 000 hours of test flights before it can carry passengers.
In the early days, the A380 was known within Airbus as the A3XX or ”VLA”- very large aircraft.
A cargo version of the plane, already ordered by delivery firms Federal Express and UPS, will be able to carry 150 tonnes of freight. – Guardian Unlimited Â