[Col. Fishguts]

Score one for Airbus

The world's largest passenger plane, the Airbus A380, has landed safely, completing its maiden flight.

The long-awaited test lasted almost four hours, with the A380 circling the Bay of Biscay before returning to base.

The A380 took off from its production site in Toulouse with a crew of six and about 20 tonnes of test equipment.

Thousands of aeroplane enthusiasts clapped and cheered as the twin-decked, four-engine "superjumbo" made a flypast before landing.

Official site: http://www.airbus.com/A380/Seeing/indexminisite.aspx

[Fineus]

Christ.. she's big! Glad it flew safetly, and certainly I hope they run into no snags down the line.

[Clave]

Only about 30 years late...

[redmenace]

waits patiently for the crash...

[Grug]

I heard it has pool tables on board. How the hell do they expect to play pool on an airplane?

[Ashrak]

Colossus of 2005

[Fineus]

Originally posted by Grug
I heard it has pool tables on board. How the hell do they expect to play pool on an airplane?

More importantly, they spend vast sums of money ensuring that weapons can't be bought on airlines... then, for a nominal fee, they equip anyone with a sharp, hard stick that could be potentially sharpened into a stake if snapped correctly.

Great thinking guys

[Col. Fishguts]

Originally posted by Clave
Only about 30 years late...

How's that ?
Global passenger numbers are still increasing and the big airports have no starting/landing slots left free. So you need something that can haul more passengers per flight, and the A380 is probably the most efficient way to do that.

[Night Hammer]

wow that big

[Col. Fishguts]

Yes, that big:

[Flaser]

Good, finally some competition in the jumbo category.

Though I'm more interested in the flying wing design Boeing seems to contemplate.

[Flipside]

Originally posted by redmenace
waits patiently for the crash...

Would you be saying that if Boeing had made it?

[Andreas]

Impressive plane indeed. I wonder how different it is to fly compared to the 747?

[Night Hammer]

7 stories tall....damn

[Taristin]

Originally posted by Flipside


Would you be saying that if Boeing had made it?

Pleh. Patriotism is sickening at times.

*has owned fake stock in LockHeed Martin in his econ class in 12th grade*

[Rictor]

thats one big mofo.

[achtung]

Hmmm....

A flying hotel!

[Swamp_Thing]

Equipped with a gymnasium, a dance floor, and many other perks.
Yet i still think they should have kept the Concord flying.

[vyper]

Indeed they should have. Or produced an equivelant.

[Mongoose]

The Concorde was far too expensive to maintain for the amount of people that used it.  I recently got to see one at the Smithsonians Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport, and the actual cabin area was a lot smaller than I imagined; I'm sure it was incredibly cramped in there.  Too bad, though; it would be nice to have widespread supersonic commercial flight.  Take the SR-71 Blackbird, for instance; the one in the museum took two hours to fly across the entire continental US.

As for the A380, very cool stuff.  There was a recent feature in Popular Science about the unveiling.  That is one massive jet.  It will be interesting to see which concept proves to be more popular, the super-jet or Boeing's new, smaller 787 design.