Airbus A380 Completes Historic 1st Flight
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Apr 27, 11:31 AM (ET)
By LAURENCE FROST
(AP) Spectators cheer as the Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger plane, takes off successfully on...
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BLAGNAC, France (AP) - The world's largest passenger plane, the Airbus A380, took its maiden flight Wednesday, cruising over the Pyrenees mountains in an aviation milestone that Europe's jetliner maker hopes will give it a leg up in its battle with American rival Boeing Co. (BA)
The double-decked plane, which can carry 840 passengers, landed to applause at 2:22 p.m. (8:22 a.m. EDT) after a flight of nearly four hours. About 30,000 spectators watched the white plane with blue tail take off and touch down, 101 years after the Wright brothers achieved the first controlled, sustained flight.
Before it landed, its front lights shining, the A380 did a slow flyover above the airport in Blagnac, southwest France, where it had taken off at 10:29 a.m. (4:29 a.m. EDT). The crew, dressed in orange suits, waved happily when they threw open the door and descended the steps.
"A new page in aviation history has been written," French President Jacques Chirac said in Paris. "It is a magnificent result of European industrial cooperation."
European governments put up about a third of the $13 billion spent in developing the A380 over 11 years, a huge gamble on a new jetliner size that Boeing passed on. The plane weighs 308 tons.
"The first flight of a brand-new aircraft is a real milestone," co-pilot Claude Lelaie said.
Airbus believes airlines will need plenty of giant aircraft to fly passengers between ever-busier hub airports. It designed the A380 to carry passengers about 5 percent farther than Boeing's longest-range 747 jumbo jet, with a per-passenger cost as much as 20 percent lower. It has booked orders for 154 A380s from 15 carriers, including Air France, Lufthansa and Virgin.
But some analysts say signs of a boom in demand for smaller, long-range jets like Boeing's 787 "Dreamliner" show that Airbus was wrong to focus resources on a superjumbo jet at the expense of its own mid-size A350 - which is due to enter service in 2010, two years after its Boeing rival.
The A380 now is scheduled to enter service for Singapore Airlines in mid-2006, about three months behind the previous schedule.
Part of the delay is down to the superjumbo's struggle with a weight problem that consumed months of engineering time and pushed the program's cost overrun to $1.88 billion.
French Cabinet ministers broke into applause when Chirac told them of the successful start to Wednesday's flight. The head of Boeing's French division, Yves Galland, said he watched the televised takeoff and, just this once, "shared the emotion of the people of Airbus."
The A380 carried a crew of six and 22 tons of test instruments.
"The takeoff was absolutely perfect," chief test pilot Jacques Rosay told reporters by radio from the cockpit as he flew at 10,000 feet just north of the Pyrenees about an hour into the flight.
He said flying the plane was as easy as "riding a bicycle."
The pilots checked the plane's basic handling characteristics while the on-board equipment recorded measurements for 150,000 separate parameters and beamed data back to computers on the ground.
The crew took no chances - donning parachutes for the first flight. A handrail inside the plane led from the cockpit to an escape door in case the pilots lost control.
Emergency services stationed fire trucks at regular intervals along the runway, although aviation experts say modern computer modeling and wind-tunnel tests have made maiden flights safer than ever.
Problems are more likely, but still rare, later in another year of test flights, when pilots deliberately take a plane to its limits. An Airbus A330 prototype crashed in July 1994, killing chief test pilot Nick Warner and six others as they conducted a simulated engine failure exercise.
So anyway, the plane takes to the skies. Anyone other than me think this plane is going to be a big 13 billion dollar flop? Especially when boeing comes out with their dreamliner the 787. Right now the plane price per passenger is cheaper, because it holds more people and blah blah blah. The 787 coming out is 20% cheaper than any other plane per passenger. The plane is built of a new composite material. The enviroment inside the plane has increased humidity without the physical weight of the plane. That translate into the inside atmosphere is a couple thousand feet lower than it's actual altitude and adds up to a more pleasant flight. But where i think the boeing will make up much more than the airbus is in the roles they are going to be used for. Boeing is focusing on small domestic flights. SOmething done alot more than transatlantic and other international flights. I think that is where the boeing's real advantage is. With the airbus it's just not economically possible to take that role. That's what's going to hurt airbus the most in the long run.
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