A380 Has First Flight

FredGarvin

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...irst_flight_18

Congrats to the A380 folks. Step one of many down.

BTW...20 tons of instrumentation. They are not screwing around with measuring things.

Gonzolo

Let me guess... 20 tons worth of crash test dummies!

cepheid

Some tidbits I heard about on the news tonight

73 m long...as long as four standard city buses arranged end to end.
Twice as long as A320

Undercarriage alone is 14 m wide. There is a concern many of the world's major airports might be ill-equipped to handle the plane's width and weight.

Mass: 500 000 kg, I believe.

Wingspan is wide enough that 35 cars placed side by side span it.

Can carry up to 800 passengers, but with only 550 passengers, there is room for some extra amenties such as a lounge, a store, or ...ahem... a casino. (!!!)


Won't fly commericially for another year, although Airbus has received orders
for 149 of them already.

Pengwuino

The way they were marketing the thing... with people up and about having some liquor and talken to a friend... id unno, is it just me or do you not see anyone actually doing that in the new airplane lol. From what i hear, people just want to get on and fall asleep lol. I wouldn't mind a bed!! and maybe a restaurant... but anything else seems kinda unrealistic.

FredGarvin

I can't remember the figure off the top of my head but Airbus needs to at least double the orders for a break even point. They went almost $ 2 billion over budget. It will be interesting to see how the aircraft actually work themselves into the system.

cronxeh

Oh look who ordered most of them http://us.news3.yimg.com/img.news.ya...raphic.gif?v=1

cepheid

Hahaha! United Arab Emirates huh? That's pretty crazy. But they're spending money like nobody's business as it is. My friend went to Dubai recently, and though he said it was nothing special right now, the developments they're planning will make it one of the most affulent/extravagent tourists cities ever. Things like a hotel partially underwater. I just thought...

Heh...Air Canada conspicuously absent from that list. Not that they could afford it. Mind you, I don't see many American Airlines on there either. Hmm interesting. You think people have reservations about this plane? At least in N. America?

DaveC426913

And it's STILL not as big as the Spruce Goose. See my journal entry.
.

Astronuc

Airbus's A380 First flight site may be of interest.

Pengwuino

lol, See: Air Canada

I doubt any american airliner is in a good position to be buying up airplanes. I wanna fly in one though just to see hwo many people actually go to the bars and supposed pool table (which doesnt make sense if your... FLYING... so maybe someone was just bsing with me) and other stuff that seems crazy cool. I wanna see one land. Must be like a skyscraper turned sideways and flying.

scavok

They said the same crap when the 747 was released. Bars, disco's, gym's, etc. In the end, the interior is entirely up to the airline, and you should have no worries that they'll cram as many seats in that plane as can possibly fit.

Peter.E

They have a price at $282m and their 154 orders should take them well past their spending cost of $13bn, a nice profit of around $304bn?

Pengwuino

Uhm 1, your missing a decimal in your calculation, and 2, the 282 million is the selling price per aircraft. Who knows how much it costs to actually build one. One estimate said that they need 2x the orders currently in place (which means 300 orders) to break even which means they must cost $238 million to make to sell at that $282 million price.

Pengwuino

Beautiful, for a second there i thought i might actually be missing something by not traveling. I wonder how many routes will actaully be able to fill 800-1000 passengers.

Clausius2

By the way one of the on board engineers in that first flight was spanish (F. Alonso).

I think Boeing guys must be a bit angry....

Pengwuino

Well, if it 'takes off' in a figureative sense, im sure they'll get mad.

LAX spent $28 million outfitting their airport for the Airbus. That means im near a hub where the A380 will be! but then again its LA... lets see... its either drive through LA or take a great flight on the worlds biggest commercial airplane in luxury...... meh, ill stay home :D

FredGarvin

They are expecting a break even point of 2010 which will equal roughly a run of 250 aircraft. There are a lot of assumptions there with that, like maintaining a production schedule of 1 per week and having another 100+ orders for aircraft.

Here's a very good compare between 747X and A380. It's worth the read:
http://www.aoe.vt.edu/~mason/Mason_f/A380Buescher.pdf