Airbus prepares to fly A380 with full load of passengers

Flight International ^ | 01/08/06 | Max Kingsley-Jones

[My2Cents]

If only....

[Seaplaner]

Dale, sounds as if you were close to the limit on that one! If you don't mind specifying the airplane make, I'd love to know.

[dalereed]

Piper Arrow

[Seaplaner]

Hmmm, same thing I rent from time-to-time.

[dalereed]

Well I didn't lose the wing!

It was about as violent up, down, and back up about 1000' each direction as you could immagine. When I hit the bottom and was sent badk up it did break the seat.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

I hit some very bad turbulence while flying from Houston, TX to Santa Cruz, Bolivia in a Ford Bronco!

[dalereed]

You sure those bumps in the road weren't mexicans?

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

This is a true story.
Evergreen Helicopter had hired a swing tail turbo prop to ferry a torn down llama to a crew in Bolivia.
It was filled with boxes and a Ford Bronco was placed in the swing tail. When the swing tail was closed the nose of the Bronco was toward the tail of the plane.

The only comfortable place to sit was in the Ford Bronco.
The helicopter pilot and mechanic had the front seats and I had the rear bench type seat.

[Politicalities]

The ELF programme will be flown by the third A380 flight-test aircraft (MSN002), which is equipped with a fully furnished, 474-seat three-class test cabin.

Um, is it just me, or does this plane keep shrinking? I could've sworn that I read initial reports that it would hold upwards of 700 pax. Then it's been slowly dropping, and now, 474? A 747-8 can carry 450. What the deuce?

[Paleo Conservative]

What the deuce?

It's a tradeoff between payload and range. More passengers weigh more and decrease the amount of cargo and fuel that can be carried. Sure it could carry 850 people, but it can't carry them the stated 8,000 nautical mile range.

[Turbopilot]

The Airbus demo interior is a luxurious three-class interior, with lots of first class suites and business class seating and probably some standup bar-type areas. That's the one that holds 474. The airlines that have ordered the 380 so far seem to have gone for 500-550 seat interiors, which would be more standard seat width and pitch in coach and fewer luxury amenities, but still sizeable numbers of first suites and business cabins, where one first class suite or business seat takes the space of several economy seats. The maximum certified capacity (853 passengers, I believe) would be a full-on cattle car with nothing but high-density (read narrow and close together) coach seating on both floors.

For purposes of comparison, some Japanese airlines use 747-400s configured with high-density coach seating on domestic routes and have almost 600 seats on them. Those 747s will still carry more passengers than the first A380s delivered with a more normal long-haul layout.

[yankeedame]

"Around 300 of the passengers will be Airbus staff, and the remainder will be "other guests", says Airbus."

Wondering if those people are employees they would like to terminate but government rules won't let them?

==========================

Naw. Probably more like 3rd and/or Nth* worlders who were told that if they went on this flight and everything goes okay they would be allowed to stay in Europe.

(* Nth world are countries even more than 3rd world countries.)

[antiRepublicrat]

Luxury sleeping compartments. The A380 will typically seat 555 passengers in three classes, although only a fortunate few will enjoy the sort of luxury shown in this mock-up.

Give it a few years and the airlines will go cattle-car. The 747 was supposed to have this luxury too.

[antiRepublicrat]

Hehe, I've done that. The smart ones got up and slept on the palettes on the loading ramp for the trip.

[Prophet in the wilderness]

I hear that they had to put more metal into the wing to strengthen it, and I will take a good guess that when they tested it, they tested it for the maximum weight it will be subjected for the final stretch model the A-380-800-900, and when they tested it, it didn't meet the ( I am guessing ) the 150 % tress test max.

[tcrlaf]

I was just thinking the same thing...

How long did the upper bar thing last on the 747's, before they were replaced with fare-paying seats?

[Species8472]

Cool time lapse video of an Airbus 340 under construction

[Paleo Conservative]

How long did the upper bar thing last on the 747's, before they were replaced with fare-paying seats?

Till the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the ensuing Arab oil embargo. When oil prices shot up, airlines were more interested in driving down the CASM than making more nonessential amenities for their passengers. Also deregulation pushed this too.

Some early 747's were bought for domestic service in the US, because the CAB regulated the number and times of flights an airline could fly but not the size of the aircraft. Airlines could add more capacity without having to apply for more authorizations of routes from the CAB. Even if the plane was too big for the route that was ok, because the CAB wouldn't let any airline go bankrupt, and the extra space could be used for other things than seats. Once airlines were deregulated, airlines started competing on frequency so they started putting more and smaller planes on domestic routes.