"By the time they get one of these abortions flying they will have to market low cost airfare to those contemplating suicide."
It has flown, though without a passenger load. Just the flight crew.
It's a monstrosity.
It has the LOAD, just not many passengers. From this Airbus webpage third paragraph:
"For its first flight, Airbus 21st century flagship, carrying the registration F-WW0W, took off at a weight of 421 tonnes / 928,300 lbs, the highest ever of any civil airliner at take-off to date. It is powered by four Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines. In addition to water ballasts, the equipment on board the A380 comprises a full set of flight-test instrumentation to record the thousands of parameters necessary to enable in-flight performance analysis." (bold by me)
The water is carried in plastic containers arranged like seats.
When this POS finally goes in the toilet the EU will have to pick up the bills for the losses. Airbus skates.