Airbus 380 heads to America

Superized Airline Heads to America

Excerpt:

Easily surpassing the Boeing 747 in the tale of the tape, she’s as tall as a seven-story building, wider than 70 vehicles parked end-to-end, as heavy as 500 Volkswagen Golfs and big enough to carry 35 million ping pong balls.

Those last two facts were gamely tossed out by Airbus’s chief salesman, John J. Leahy, during last month’s test flight over the Pyrenees. The Times reporter on the flight, Mark Landler, stopped three paragraphs into his story to sum it up more succinctly. “This thing is big,” he wrote.

So what better way to kickstart the American tour by simultaneously landing one on each coast? That’s scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Eastern time.

One is carrying more than 500 passengers from Frankfurt to John F. Kennedy International Airport. The other is flying without passengers from Airbus’s headquarters in Toulouse, France, to Los Angeles International Airport.

Comment: This should cut the cost of air travel to Europe (and the Orient)

Be sure to see Un Airbus A380 en 7 Minutes