Airbus A380 700

The Airbus A380 is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine jet airliner manufactured by European Union manufacturer Airbus It is the world's largest passenger airliner, and the airports at which it operates have upgraded facilities to accommodate it. It was initially named Airbus A3XX and designed to challenge Boeing's monopoly in the large-aircraft market. The A380 made its first flight on 27 April 2005 and entered commercial service in October 2007 with Singapore Airlines.

The A380's upper deck extends along the entire length of the fuselage, with a width equivalent to a wide-body aircraft. This gives the A380-800's cabin 550 square metres (5,920 sq ft) of usable floor space, 40% more than the next largest airliner, the Boeing 747-8, and provides seating for 525 people in a typical three-class configuration or up to 853 people in an all-economy class configuration. The A380-800 has a design range of 8,500 nautical miles (15,700 km), serving the second longest non-stop scheduled flight in the world, and a cruising speed of Mach 0.85 (about 900 km/h, 560 mph or 490 kn at cruising altitude).

As of May 2016, Airbus had received 319 firm orders and delivered 190 aircraft; Emirates is the biggest A380 customer with 142 on order and 79 delivered.

Development

Background

In mid-1988, Airbus engineers led by Jean Roeder began work in secret on the development of an ultra-high-capacity airliner (UHCA), both to complete its own range of products and to break the dominance that Boeing had enjoyed in this market segment since the early 1970s with its 747.McDonnell Douglas unsuccessfully offered its smaller, double-deck MD-12 concept for sale.Roeder was given approval for further evaluations of the UHCA after a formal presentation to the President and CEO in June 1990. The megaproject was announced at the 1990 Farnborough Air Show, with the stated goal of 15% lower operating costs than the 747-400.Airbus organised four teams of designers, one from each of its partners (Aérospatiale, British Aerospace, Deutsche Aerospace AG, CASA) to propose new technologies for its future aircraft designs. The designs were presented in 1992 and the most competitive designs were used.

In January 1993, Boeing and several companies in the Airbus consortium started a joint feasibility study of a Very Large Commercial Transport (VLCT), aiming to form a partnership to share the limited market. This joint study was abandoned two years later, Boeing's interest having declined because analysts thought that such a product was unlikely to cover the projected $15 billion development cost. Despite the fact that only two airlines had expressed public interest in purchasing such a plane, Airbus was already pursuing its own large plane project. Analysts suggested that Boeing would instead pursue stretching its 747 design, and that air travel was already moving away from the hub and spoke system that consolidated traffic into large planes, and toward more non-stop routes that could be served by smaller planes.


The first completed A380 at the "A380 Reveal" event in Toulouse, France, 18 January 2005
In June 1994, Airbus announced its plan to develop its own very large airliner, designated the A3XX. Airbus considered several designs, including an unusual side-by-side combination of two fuselages from its A340, the largest Airbus jet at the timeThe A3XX was pitted against the VLCT study and Boeing's own New Large Aircraft successor to the 747. From 1997 to 2000, as the East Asian financial crisis darkened the market outlook, Airbus refined its design, targeting a 15–20% reduction in operating costs over the existing Boeing 747-400. The A3XX design converged on a double-decker layout that provided more passenger volume than a traditional single-deck designin line with traditional hub-and-spoke theory as opposed to the point-to-point theory with the Boeing 777,[24] after conducting an extensive market analysis with over 200 focus groups.[Although early marketing of the huge cross-section touted the possibility of duty-free shops, restaurant-like dining, gyms, casinos & beauty parlours on board, the realities of airline economics have kept such dreams grounded.

On 19 December 2000, the supervisory board of newly restructured Airbus voted to launch an €8.8-billion programme to build the A3XX, re-christened as the A380with 50 firm orders from six launch customer The A380 designation was a break from previous Airbus families, which had progressed sequentially from A300 to A340. It was chosen because the number 8 resembles the double-deck cross section, and is a lucky number in some Asian countries where the aircraft was being marketed.The aircraft configuration was finalised in early 2001, and manufacturing of the first A380 wing box component started on 23 January 2002. The development cost of the A380 had grown to €1billion when the first aircraft was completed.

Production

Diagram showing flow of aircraft part in western Europe. Land is white, sea is pale blue
Geographical logistics sequence for the A380, with final assembly in Toulouse
Major structural sections of the A380 are built in France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Due to the sections' large size, traditional transportation methods proved infeasible,so they are brought to the Jean-Luc Lagardère Plant assembly hall in Toulouse, France by specialised surface transportation, though some parts are moved by the A300-600ST Beluga transport aircraft, which is also used in the movement of other Airbus model component A380 components are provided by suppliers from around the world; the four largest contributors, by value, are Rolls-Royce, Safran, United Technologies and General Elec

For the surface movement of large A380 structural components, a complex route known as the Itinéraire à Grand Gabarit was developed. This involved the construction of a fleet of roll-on/roll-off (RORO) ships and barges, the construction of port facilities and the development of new and modified roads to accommodate oversized road coThe front and rear fuselage sections are shipped on one of three RORO ships from Hamburg in northern Germany to the United Kingdom.The wings are manufactured at Broughton in North Wales, then transported by barge to Mostyn docks for ship transport





A380 components on a barge
In Saint-Nazaire in western France, the ship exchanges the fuselage sections from Hamburg for larger, assembled sections, some of which include the nose. The ship unloads in Bordeaux. The ship then picks up the belly and tail sections from Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA in Cádiz in southern Spain, and delivers them to Bordeaux. From there, the A380 parts are transported by barge to Langon, and by oversize road convoys to the assembly hall in ToulouseIn order to avoid damage from direct handling, parts are secured in custom jigs carried on self-powered wheeled vehic

After assembly, the aircraft are flown to Hamburg Finkenwerder Airport (XFW) to be furnished and painted. Airbus sized the production facilities and supply chain for a production rate of four A380s per month.

Testing

A380 prototype on its maiden flight
Five A380s were built for testing and demonstration purposes.The first A380, registered F-WWOW, was unveiled in Toulouse 18 January 2005. It first flew on 27 April 2] This plane, equipped with Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines, flew from Toulouse Blagnac International Airport with a crew of six headed by chief test pilot Jacques RosaRosay said flying the A380 had been "like handling a bicycle".

On 1 December 2005, the A380 achieved its maximum design speed of Mach 0.96, (its design cruise speed is Mach 0.85) in a shallow dive.In 2006, the A380 flew its first high-altitude test at Bole International Airport, Addis Ababa. It conducted its second high-altitude test at the same airport in 2009 On 10 January 2006, it flew to José María Córdova International Airport in Colombia, accomplishing the transatlantic testing, and then it went to El Dorado International Airport to test the engine operation in high-altitude airports. It arrived in North America on 6 February 2006, landing in Iqaluit, Nunavut in Canada for cold-weather testi


Flight test engineer's station on the lower deck of A380 F-WWOW
On 14 February 2006, during the destructive wing strength certification test on MSN5000, the test wing of the A380 failed at 145% of the limit load, short of the required 150% level. Airbus announced modifications adding 30 kg (66 lb) to the wing to provide the required str On 26 March 2006, the A380 underwent evacuation certification in Hamburg. With 8 of the 16 exits arbitrarily blocked, 853 mixed passengers and 20 crew exited the darkened aircraft in 78 seconds, less than the 90 seconds required for certification Three days later, the A380 received European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval to carry up to 853 passengers.



A380 in original Airbus livery
Airbus announced the first delay in June 2005 and notified airlines that deliveries would be delayed by six months. This reduced the total number of planned deliveries by the end of 2009 from about 120 to 90–100. On 13 June 2006, Airbus announced a second delay, with the delivery schedule slipping an additional six to seven months. Although the first delivery was still planned before the end of 2006, deliveries in 2007 would drop to only 9 aircraft, and deliveries by the end of 2009 would be cut to 70–80 aircraft. The announcement caused a 26% drop in the share price of Airbus' parent, EADS, and led to the departure of EADS CEO Noël Forgeard, Airbus CEO Gustav Humbert, and A380 programme manager Charles Champion.On 3 October 2006, upon completion of a review of the A380 program, Airbus CEO Christian Streiff announced a third delay, pushing the first delivery to October 2007, to be followed by 13 deliveries in 2008, 25 in 2009, and the full production rate of 45 aircraft per year in 2010.The delay also increased the earnings shortfall projected by Airbus through 2010 to €4.8 billion.

As Airbus prioritised the work on the A380-800 over the A380F,freighter orders were cancelled by FedEx and UPS,or converted to A380-800 by Emirates and ILFC Airbus suspended work on the freighter version, but said it remained on offer, albeit without a service entry date.For the passenger version Airbus negotiated a revised delivery schedule and compensation with the 13 customers, all of which retained their orders with some placing subsequent orders, including Emirates, Singapore Airlines,Qantas,Air France, Qatar Airways, and Korean Air.

On 13 May 2008, Airbus announced reduced deliveries for the years 2008 (12) and 2009 After further manufacturing setbacks, Airbus announced its plan to deliver 14 A380s in 2009, down from the previously revised target of 18. A total of 10 A380s were delivered in 2009. In 2010 Airbus delivered 18 of the expected 20 A380s, due to Rolls-Royce engine availability problems.Airbus planned to deliver "between 20 and 25" A380s in 2011 before ramping up to three a month in 2012.In fact, Airbus delivered 26 units, thus outdoing its predicted output for the first time. As of July 2012, production was 3 aircraft per month. Among the production problems are challenging interiors, interiors being installed sequentially rather than concurrently as in smaller planes, and union/government objections to streamlining.

Entry into service

An Emirates A380 on approach to Paris CDG
Nicknamed Superjumbo,[84] the first A380, MSN003, (registered as 9V-SKA) was delivered to Singapore Airlines on 15 October 2007 and entered service on 25 October 2007 with flight number SQ380 between Singapore and Sydney.[15][85] Passengers bought seats in a charity online auction paying between $560 and $100,380.[86] Two months later, Singapore Airlines CEO Chew Choong Seng stated the A380 was performing better than either the airline and Airbus had anticipated, burning 20% less fuel per seat-mile than the airline's 747-400 fleet. Emirates' Tim Clark claimed that the A380 has better fuel economy at Mach 0.86 than at 0.83, and that its technical dispatch reliability is at 97%, same as Singapore Airlines. Airbus is committed to reach the industry standard of 98.5%.