The Airbus A380 makes it through its first commercial flight
Singapore Airlines pulled off a next-gen aeroplane coup yesterday, with the first ever commercial flight of the vast double decker Airbus A380. There wasn’t even one fireball over Indonesia as flight SQ380 successfully made it all the way from Singapore to Sydney in one very large piece.
“The flight was spectacular, just truly awesome,” said Thomas Lee, one of the passengers – a man who’s so into his planes he also flew on the inaugural 747 flight back in 1970.
Tickets for this event were only available via an online auction – unless you’re Singapore Airlines management – with some lucky plane spotters handing over around $50,000 for a seat. It’ll be cheaper when SA’s fleet of 19 A380s go into regular service and start flying to London from next year.
The mega-ultra-hyper-jumbo can carry a maximum of 853 people, although, perhaps wary of creating a new personal best on the accident statistics, this first flight was only loaded with 455. And if you want a go on one you have to go with Singapore Airlines – no other “carrier” (we know all the plane world’s tech speak) is taking delivery of any A380s for nearly a year.
(Via International Herald Tribune)
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