The first flight of the A-380 has been finished safly. But Air Canada and Air India seem to have bought into the Boeing smaller, faster point to point plance model. Still, it has gotten a fiar number of orders. This is certinly good for airbus, as they did rather gamble their future on it.

Quantas bought 12, apparently. I'm amazed those things can get off the ground. Soo big and fat.

This post has been edited by Oddfish: Apr 27 2005, 12:46 PM

There is some speculation on longer models, if it sells well. That was done with the 747.

Quantas is a good airline. Safe, and unless its gone downhill in the last 8 years (its been way to long sice I've been down there...), with much better srevice than Air Canada (which has a similer safty record). for that matter, CP air had better service than Air Canada. Then air Canada bought it.

:ph34r: The 380 is an awesome sight, unfortunately, the aircraft is so large, it will be difficult to taxi and park at many airports. This may be one of the reasons that they aren't filling too many orders yet. It will, however, be hard to surpass this aircraft for overseas flights.

i saw it fly when it was in sydney for promotion 3 weeks ago. Cool plane, very large and very quiet.

:ph34r: As a person who flys small airplanes, I'm still a little freaked out about the whole, "Fly by wire" thing. I'm still more comfortable knowing there are 5,000lb tensile strength steel cables connecting the control surfaces. I guess it would be difficult the control a 380 with cables though.

The issue with the A380 is that it is TOO big. Unless you have passenger volumes to justify it, it is basically not a economically prudent alternative to smaller more efficient aircraft.

I do not anticipate it doing as much business as the Boeing 747 at any time simply because of that factor.

As long as it cut down on traffic, I'm fine with it.

*gets to work by jumping across the gap between airplanes in flight*