More follow-ups to the A380 rollout
Published 9:00 pm Thursday, January 20, 2005
Here’s a story from The Christian Science Monitor that looks at how Boeing reacted to Tuesday’s rollout:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0121/p02s01-usec.html
The Guardian of Manchester reported that the plane is great, but …
http://www.guardian.co.uk/airlines/story/0,1371,1393556,00.html
And The Guardian’s in-house design critic pans it:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/airlines/story/0,1371,1393581,00.html
Here’s a pretty even-handed look at the A380 and its impact on aviation from the Sydney Morning Herald (you may need to register to read it):
http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Crowds-in-the-clouds/2005/01/21/1106110942772.html?oneclick=true
Here’s what Emirates — the biggest A380 buyer — plans to do with the plane:
http://www.di-ve.com/dive/portal/portal.jhtml?id=168884&pid=null
Finally, here’s a sampling of European press reaction, compiled by the BBC:
Superjumbo
Tuesday’s unveiling of the Airbus A380 “superjumbo” airliner attracts a mixture of enthusiasm and scepticism.
Spain’s El Pais is enthusiastic, seeing “this huge flying whale” as evidence “that European co-operation is beginning to be more than a hollow phrase and that success is possible given the will and unity of purpose”.
The airliner is also welcomed by Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
“Europe is writing a new chapter in the history of aviation,” the paper says.
“This giant of the air will probably open a new chapter in mass tourism,” it forecasts.
But the Berliner Zeitung is ambivalent.
On the one hand, it believes, “the A380 shows that the old continent under the leadership of Germany and France is capable of extraordinary achievements”.
On the other, it sees Airbus as a symbol of Europe’s weakness.
“Airbus and its parent company Eads are not only successful companies but also fragile political constructs, which require many compromises,” it says.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung, meanwhile, is emphatically sceptical.
“The French, who take most of the credit for the Airbus triumph, once before built the most beautiful, modern and audacious plane – which was a gigantic financial flop and has long been consigned to museums: Concorde.”
