The Airbus A380 is a double-deck, four-engined airliner manufactured by EADS (Airbus S.A.S.) It first flew on 27 April 2005 from Toulouse in France. Commercial flights are scheduled to begin in 2007 after lengthy delays. During much of its development phase, the aircraft was known as the Airbus A3XX. The nickname Superjumbo has become associated with the A380.

The A380's upper deck extends along the entire length of the fuselage. This allows for a spacious cabin with 50% more floor space than the next largest airliner, the Boeing 747-400, and provides seating for 555 people in standard three-class configuration or up to 853 people in full economy class configuration.[1] Two models of the A380 are available. The A380-800, the passenger model, is the largest passenger airliner in the world,[2] superseding the Boeing 747. The other launch model, the A380-800F, will be one of the largest freight aircraft and will have a payload capacity exceeded only by the Antonov An-225.[3]

The A380-800 has a maximum range of 15,000 kilometres (8,000 nmi, sufficient to fly from Chicago to Sydney nonstop), and a cruising speed of Mach 0.85 (about 900 km/h or 560 MPH at cruise altitude),[2] similar to that of the Boeing 747.[4]

The A380 is notably in direct competition on long haul routes with the Boeing 747-8, the current new development of Boeing's largest airliner, also being developed and pre-sold at a similar time. For airlines seeking very large passenger airliners, the two have been pitched as competitors on various occasions. Following delays to the A380 program some airlines switched (or stated they are considering switching) their orders to the 747-8 instead.[5]
Contents


History

[edit] Development
The first completed A380 at the "A380 Reveal" event in Toulouse
The first completed A380 at the "A380 Reveal" event in Toulouse

Airbus started the development of a very large airliner in the early 1990s, both to complete its own range of products and to break the dominance that Boeing had enjoyed in this market segment since the early 1970s with its 747. McDonnell Douglas pursued a similar strategy with its ultimately unsuccessful MD-12 design. As each manufacturer looked to build a successor to the 747, they knew there was room for only one new aircraft to be profitable in the 600 to 800 seat market segment. Each knew the risk of splitting such a niche market, as had been demonstrated by the simultaneous debut of the Lockheed L-1011 and the McDonnell Douglas DC-10: either aircraft met the market's needs, but the market could profitably sustain only one model, eventually resulting in Lockheed's departure from the civil airliner business. In January 1993, Boeing and several companies in the Airbus consortium started a joint feasibility study of an aircraft known as the Very Large Commercial Transport (VLCT), aiming to form a partnership to share the limited market.

In June 1994, Airbus began developing its own very large airliner, designated the A3XX. Airbus considered several designs, including an odd side-by-side combination of two fuselages from the A340, which was Airbus's largest jet at the time.[1] The A3XX was pitted against the VLCT study and Boeing's own New Large Aircraft successor to the 747, which evolved into the 747X, a stretched version of the 747 with the fore body "hump" extended rearwards to accommodate more passengers. The joint VLCT effort ended in July 1996, and Boeing suspended the 747X program in January 1997 - only to resurrect it several times before finally launching the 747-8 Intercontinental in November 2005. From 1997 to 2000, as the East Asian financial crisis darkened the market outlook, Airbus refined its design, targeting a 15 to 20 percent reduction in operating costs over the existing Boeing 747-400. The A3XX design converged on a double-decker layout that provided higher seat capacities than a traditional single-deck design.

On 19 December 2000, the supervisory board of newly restructured Airbus voted to launch a € 8.8 billion program to build the A3XX, re-christened as the A380, with 55 orders from six launch customers. The A380 designation was a break from previous sequential Airbus designations because the numeral 8 resembles the double-deck cross section, and symbolizes good luck in some Asian cultures. The aircraft's final configuration was frozen in early 2001, and manufacturing of the first A380 wing box component started on 23 January 2002. The development cost of the A380 had grown to