TOULOUSE, France – To build the world’s biggest passenger plane, Airbus first constructed the world’s largest wing and fuselage factories. It set up a paint shop big enough to house a football stadium, bought the world’s biggest automated riveting machine and commissioned a 505-foot-long transport ship.
Today at Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, France, the public will get its first look at what many consider an engineering marvel: the A380, the heaviest and costliest commercial passenger aircraft ever built. In a lavish ceremony, a 10-story-high curtain will part to reveal the first completed “super-jumbo” plane before about 5,000 guests.
The A380 will carry as many as 800 passengers – more than double the capacity of a Boeing 747 – on two decks. The craft will weigh more than 1.2 million pounds fully loaded. It stretches about 260 feet wingtip to wingtip, and the tail stands seven stories high. The A380’s passenger cabin is so elevated that 18 doors are equipped with emergency slides made with friction material to slow down escaping passengers. Final work on the aircraft is done in a hangar 1,610 feet long, and workers must take elevators to reach their spots in the assembly line along a five-story-high scaffolding.
“Everything about this plane is mind-boggling,” said Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst for research firm Teal Group.
For 35 years, Boeing Co.’s 747 set the standard for jumbo commercial aircraft. European governments got into the airplane business in 1970 by teaming up to finance Airbus, which is now controlled by a Dutch aerospace company. Airbus thinks its plane will create the blueprint for the next generation of airborne giants.
“It’s the plane of the future, a cruise ship in the sky,” said John Leahy, Airbus’ top salesman, who is credited with helping the company surpass Boeing as the world’s biggest-selling aircraft maker. The A380 “will change the way we fly, just like what the 747 did.”
Eleven airlines, including Singapore, Korean Air, Lufthansa and Air France, plus cargo carriers FedEx and UPS, have ordered 149 planes at $250 million apiece. After a year of test flights, the first passenger-carrying A380 is expected to fly in spring 2006, with Los Angeles International Airport a likely destination.
The man responsible for this $12-billion project, including the delivery of a jigsaw puzzle of parts, is Frenchman Charles Champion, 49, executive vice president for the A380. Champion has no doubt that despite its size, the A380 will fly “beautifully.” The plane relies more on composites, such as carbon fiber, than does the 747, to save weight while adding more space.
The economic effect of the plane is already widespread. More than 100,000 people in the United States alone are involved in getting the A380 airborne.
At Monogram Systems in Carson, Calif., engineers are refining the plumbing for the biggest waste and water system ever built for an aircraft. In Irvine, Calif., Thales Inc. has built the world’s largest in-flight entertainment test laboratory, where 600 seat-back video monitors are left on for days to see how such a system would perform if that many A380 passengers decided to watch movies at the same time.
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