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A380 superjumbo lands in Sydney

Singapore Airlines A380 landing in Sydney

Superjumbo lands
The world's largest passenger plane, the Airbus A380, has landed in Sydney on its first commercial flight, after a seven-hour journey from Singapore.

Singapore Airlines took delivery of the huge plane, dubbed the Superjumbo, just over a week ago. Passengers bought seats in a charity online auction.

It can carry some 850 passengers, but took about 450 to Sydney.

The superjumbo's advent ends a reign of nearly four decades by the Boeing 747 as the world's biggest airliner.

Delays

The new aircraft suffered almost two years of delays because of a number of construction problems, but took off on time.

Sir Richard Branson's airline, Virgin Atlantic, is a Superjumbo customer but the project's teething problems led it to defer its order of six aircraft until 2013.


I have never been in anything like this in the air before in my life
Passenger Tony Elwood

What was the flight like?

One of the passengers on board, Laurence Watts, told the BBC about his experience.

"I'm actually sitting in the economy class on the lower deck of the plane," he said.

"The most amazing thing is here you have two classes of economy, split over two decks, with stairs in between the two, which I think is a huge novelty for everyone.

"The plane itself - the space is bigger than anything you can imagine. I can look out the window to my right at the moment and I can see a wing that looks bigger than most ordinary planes."

Hundreds of staff and passengers at Singapore's Changi Airport watched it lift into the sky, snapping the moment with pocket cameras and camera phones.

Passengers paid between $560 and $100,380 to be on the inaugural flight.

"I have never been in anything like this in the air before in my life," said a fellow passenger, Australian Tony Elwood, who travelled in a private first-class suite with his wife Julie.

"It is going to make everything else after this simply awful."

Australian welcome

With the superjumbo's wing span almost the size of a football pitch, Sydney Airport has spent millions to accommodate the new plane.

To cope with the two decks of seating, it has had to construct new aero bridges.

It has also had to realign one of the taxi ways and strengthen a tunnel which runs underneath the main runway.

Singapore Airlines is now set to take delivery of a further five A380s in 2008, out of its order of 19.

In total, Airbus now has 165 firm orders for the A380, and 20 "commitments" from 15 airlines.

However, some analysts remain unconvinced that the plane will be a success.

Standard & Poor's Equity Research analyst Shukor Yusof points to the fact Airbus' US rival Boeing already has more than 700 orders for its forthcoming 787 Dreamliner.

While Airbus sees the future growth of air travel being focused on larger planes such as the A380 flying between major hubs, Boeing is aiming the mid-sized 787 at more flights between airports of all sizes.

"I see there's some demand for the A380, but it's an expensive way to address a small market," said Mr Yusof.

Boeing's 787 has also been hit by production delays, with the first deliveries now not due until the end of next year, six months behind schedule.

Did you see someone off in Singapore? Did you wait for the plane in Sydney? Send us your comments using the form below.

I was one of the official photographers for the departure flight from Singapore. I am an aviation enthusiast and this is a moment that I have been waiting for with incredible excitement! When the aircraft began to move down the runway, I felt an incredible tinge of excitement run through my body....it is a moment I will treasure for my whole life.
Andrew Hunt, Singapore

We are a small red dot in South East Asia. During my school days in America, my university friends thought that Singapore is a city in China. We are proud to be given the first new generation plane to operate and to have Sydney as the first place of call reflects close bilateral relationship between Singapore and Australia. History was indeed set today in Singapore and though I wasn't there to witness the giant plane's departure, I feel proud to be a Singaporean.
Willy Teo, Singapore

I watched her approach from my office window at the end of the main runway. Traffic stopped as the lane appeared through the cloud and landed in front of us. We got a great view as she taxied to her stand. Wish I had been in seat 1A!
David Henderson, Sydney

It was a little disappointing that the A380 was unable to do a low level flight down the harbour owing to low cloud and showers however we are experiencing the worst drought ever. It was interesting to hear the air traffic controllers calling the plane "the big fella".
Michael Wilson, Sydney

I come from Toulouse, where the plan is assembled. It has a huge economical impact on my region, a new quarter in Toulouse will built for the plane workers. Lot of my friends work in small firm connected with Airbus.
Olivier, Paris

Well Done Airbus! My husband is part of the team supporting the A380 in Singapore, I'm missing him terribly but I am so proud of him and the team supporting this magnificent aircraft.
Emma Walker, Toulouse

Amazingly we have a huge divide on the same planet. Here in Uganda we have poor folks reeling from the effects of floods and mosquitoes while out there the Airbus makes this historic journey. Gives us hope though that one good day we may share with our better of colleagues on how to tame nature. But don't leave us behind.
Nakwagala Fred, Kampala, Uganda

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BBC NEWS | Business | A380 superjumbo lands in Sydney

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dave lukins

My next door neighbour came in for a cup tea yesterday having just returned from Toulouse. He is an engineer working on the wing assembly. He said it is a fantastic aircraft. He's now of to Spain for a couple of years working on another part of its construction.

gunnut

I see this as another Concorde, a symbol of pride but never turning a profit.

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glyn

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Parihaka

It was beautiful watching her wings loose their droop and straighten out as she took off from Changi.

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wabpilot

I tend to agree. Like a great many oversize aircraft, the A380 is destined to be a trash hauler. It's too big for self loading cargo, they just get confused.

wkllaw

The market for the A380 is pretty small since many airports can't take the plane due to size and other difficulties.

I don't think the plane is worth the development.

However, the plane looks really nice and cool though.

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omon

i think it is better to have 2 smaller plains than 1 big one, god forbid, but if it crashes, big loss, smaler one crashes, not so big of a loss.

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Ironduke

Is there an A380 cargo model?

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TopHatter

Yep, a freighter version is being offered as the A380-800F.

According to Wikipedia, it will have a cargo-capacity second only to the mammoth Antonov An-225 (one of the most beautiful "trash-haulers" IMO )

Personally I'm really excited about the 787. It's just a damn shame that American carriers aren't buying squat for new planes, much less the Dreamliner

wabpilot

If it doesn't say 737 on it, then Southwest won't buy it. If SWA won't buy, no one else has the $ to be a launch customer. And that my friend is the state of the industry today.

TopHatter

Yeah, so true. It was only SWA that didn't do a fly-by through bankruptcy court post-9/11


The good news is, Northwest is picking up 18 of the -8 version with rights for 50 more.

The bad news is, well, it's Northwest.

The good news is, Delta and American will probably place orders sooner or later and possibly United as well.

The bad news is, well, it's Delta, American and United.

I prefer the smaller, newer airlines like Spirit and AirTran (yes, I know they used to be ValueJet).

furkensturker

I remember when the first 747s came out, all the top deck was going to be a cocktail bar for the 1st class passengers, then they realised that if they made the whole upstairs 1st class, they could squeeze a whole lot more into cattle class, hence, make more more moolar.

Luftansa had a mock up of an A380 that had normal economy seats that converted to triple bunks for the long haul flights. The extra cost would only be $150 extra.

Freddie

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furkensturker

There is a big airbus cargo plane called the beluga

Image:A300-600ST 1 New Colour.JPG - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ugly as sin it is, even worse than Tankie

Freddie

Trooth

I think that the analysts have gone too much down the "There can only be one successful business model" route and I am not actually convinced the aeroplanes are going to be fighting over the same customers.

Air traffic is going to continue growing for some time in all directions. The big hubs (both airlines and airports themselves) will want to shift more passengers with less flights. People want to go to more local airports, so do the carriers as well, however until the actual country demographics catch up I think both markets will grow in parallel.

We already have thousands of annoyed customers every day landing at "smaller more local" airports on cut-price flights and then finding themselves in the middle of nowhere and vowing never to do this again. Until these airports have something near them that people want to actually go to the market isn't mature enough for it to be the way people fly in the future.

The challenge for Boeing is to get its planes out the door, since the parallel growing markets could see the larger carriers redeploying their smaller craft for "local airports" and getting a smaller number of A380s to replace their hub traffic.

On the other hand, it's only the flag carriers that can afford new planes, and especially the A380.

It is interesting that Ryan Air, keen to go to anything cheap patch of tarmac, ordered 70 737s and its option was for a further 70 of the same.

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