Poised for takeoff on that hot morning in April 2005, the Airbus A380 had the purposeful, powerful presence of a giant predatory bird. With its enormous gulled wings; imperiously tall tail; and broad, domed forepeak, it looked ready to take on the world, champion its supporters, and silence its critics. And there have been plenty of both. No civil airliner since the supersonic Concorde has aroused such passion, such controversy, and such fascination.
To friend and foe alike, all agree it is a phenomenal engineering achievement. To some, the superjumbo is a magnificent cruise liner of the skies with unprecedented money-making potential. To others, it is a huge white elephant with questionable economics and a slim chance of success.
To a confident Airbus and the thousands of awestruck workers who cheered it into that cloudless sky over Toulouse, it means so much more. Under the broad wings of this incredible project, the European company has been reborn as a single corporate entity—transformed from a loose consortium into a new, more dynamic force to challenge its worthy adversary Boeing in every market sector.
The A380, which was designed to bring people together on a scale never before seen, had touched thousands of lives before it even flew. The very act of creating the superjumbo has forged a globe-spanning network of more than 100 international suppliers and partners in more than 20 countries. The superjumbo infrastructure, therefore, matches the industrial scale and sophistication of a space program.
And scale and space is what the A380 is all about. The aircraft is almost as large as the list of superlatives frequently used to describe it. The first airliner designed to carry almost 900 passengers in its baseline version, it has the most spacious interior of any jetliner ever built, the biggest wings, and the greatest overall engine thrust. Its double-deck load, hopes Airbus, will help relieve congestion at airports by taking up less space than the two airliners it can replace. In that sense, it is also the “greenest” long haul airliner yet developed, burning less than 1 gallon of fuel per passenger over 95 miles, a fuel consumption comparable with a small turbo-diesel family car.
As these words were written, the age of the superjumbo was in its infancy, flight tests were underway and deliveries about to begin.
This book, therefore, tells the story of where the A380 has come from, how it was designed and built, and gives a guide as to where it is going in the future. Time, of course, will reveal the true destiny of the superjumbo. Given the skill, spirit, commitment, and passion of all those involved in the birth of this remarkable aircraft, however, the signs are that the A380 will be the flagship of the twenty-first century and take its place as one of the greatest aircraft ever made.
–Guy Norris and Mark Wagner, July 2005