On most of my posts, I spend a lot of time picking apart numbers, doing research, and gathering my thoughts before putting together what hopefully ends up being something you enjoy reading. Today, you won’t see any of that. My post today is one of pure airline dork bliss. Yesterday, I took a ride on the A380, and here’s how it went.

Airbus brought their A380 back to LAX this week, but instead of just a static display, they, together with Qantas, decided to have a 2 hour flightseeing trip for about 150 people. When the offer came into my inbox, I obviously jumped at the chance.

The weather has been far from perfect in LA recently. We’ve had a lot of smoke from the fires, gray days thanks to the marine layer, and some hot dry Santa Ana winds to keep things interesting. This morning we’re even seeing rain. But when I woke up yesterday, there was none of that. It was a picture perfect Chamber of Commerce day that’s usually reserved for the Rose Parade every year. Perfect.

Our flight was to depart at 730a, so I arrived early to make sure I didn’t miss anything. The event began at the Flight Path Learning Center museum which resides in the Imperial Terminal building. (If you haven’t been there, go.) I checked in and despite my best efforts to show some skin, ended up with a coach boarding pass. It was blank, so they said just take any coach seat once onboard. Though they said photo ID would be required, they never checked it. But don’t worry. They did make me take my shoes off as I went through security screening.

I milled about the museum eating a continental breakfast and filling up on LAX history until about 645a when they called us for boarding (I think that’s when it was, I was a bit groggy). I jumped to the front and ended up being the second one to head out to the plane. We were guided on to a long red carpet (at left) which led us to the towering stairs up to the beast. The flight attendants at the door took my boarding pass and then I headed onboard eager to look around.

---

November 29, 2007
Qantas #380 Lv Los Angeles (LAX) 730a Arr Los Angeles (LAX) 930a
LAX: Gate Imperial Terminal, Runway 25L, Dept :11E
LAX: Gate Imperial Terminal, Runway 25L, Arr :33E
Aircraft: F-WWJB, Airbus A380-841, Airbus House Colors, ~150/519
Seat: 7A
Flight Time: 1h17m

You won’t hear me bothering to review the interior of this plane. This the Airbus demo, so the seats aren’t actually seats that any airline has decided to use. This is just what Airbus set up too woo potential buyers (and apparently this trip is the last one before they rip it out and prep it for delivery). What I will talk about is the plane itself.

My first impression was that it would be an awesome place to play hide-and-go-seek. It is just a massive aircraft.That could partially be because there wasn’t anyone else on board, but more likely it’s just because . . . it’s a massive aircraft. On the lower deck, coach seating will be in a 3-4-3 setup, just like on the 747 main deck, but it did seem somewhat bigger. Part of that may be the illusion of big windows. See, the outer glass window doesn’t appear to be too much larger than normal, but the inner plastic window is very large and it funnels down to the outside. It really opened the cabin up.

I started walking back and, assuming we’d takeoff and loop around to the south, took the first non-bulkhead window in coach. That put me just in front of the wing, as you can see by my pictures. After sitting down, the first thing I noticed was the curvature of the cabin walls (at right). When you’re on a 747, the walls seem to go almost straight up and down on the main deck. On this plane, it appears to curve out from the bottom before straightening out. That made it uncomfortable to actually rest my head on the wall. So, if you’re in coach and you’re going to sleep, don’t plan on using the walls.

I walked backwards while everyone else was boarding and went up the spiral stairs. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let anyone sit in coach up there for the flight, but I did have a look around. The upstairs cabin is a more humane 2-4-2 in coach. The slope in the walls is noticeable, and like on the 747’s upper deck, there is a nice little compartment between the window seat and the window (at left). That’s a great feature, and I think it’s clear that unless you’re traveling in a group of three, upper deck seating if the way to go, if you have the choice.

I came back down when we were told to buckle up and get ready for the VIPs. VIPs? Well it was just LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. He came on with a gaggle of television cameras, and made his way through the plane. When he got to coach, he exclaimed, “This is where the people sit!” and then proceeded to shake everyone’s hands and ask their names. That took awhile, but when he was done, he left. Weird, right? Well apparently there’s an old California law that prohibits government officials from accepting transportation. I hear this dates back to railroad times to help prevent corruption. So, even though this was a flight that came right back to where it started, he still couldn’t accept the trip.

Once he was off, it was time to go. We pushed back and taxied slowly down to Runway 25L. Right before we took the runway, a Qantas 747 conveniently landed right ahead of us. Cool.

We turned on to the runway and I had my seatback video tuned to the camera in the tail pointing forward. The engines spooled up and we were soon barreling down the runway. (Video of initial takeoff roll) Soon enough we were leaping off the runway. Below is a 16 second video I took as we become airborne. Notice all the helicopters swarming as we go by.

I’ve also uploaded videos of us climbing over the Pacific, encountering a few bumps, and turning.

As we continued to climb, I just kept focusing on the massive, heaving wing. It is a truly incredible structure, and probably the thing about the A380 that impresses me the most. Just an amazing work of art.

Anyway, as I said, we got up quickly, and that’s no surprise. With only 150 people on board and a short flight, they didn’t have much weight at all. I found out later that we took off at around 360 (369?) tonnes when the max takeoff weight is actually 560 tonnes. Think about that. That’s 1.2m pounds. Holy crap! I believe the 747-400ER can tip the scales at no more than 910,000 pounds if it wants to get airborne.

The seatbelt sign came off very quickly as we continued heading west along the coast toward Santa Barbara (and eventually Hawai’i - I kept my fingers crossed the pilot would keep going). At that point, it became cocktail hour as everyone got up and started mingling. The champagne came out in glass flutes while flight attendants circulated with appetizers, or as one attendant called them, savories. I just went for a walk.

The first thing I wanted to do was check out the noise. The thing I hear most about this plane is how quiet it is. Maybe it was just over hyped, because from where I was sitting, it certainly seemed quiet, but it wasn’t anything shocking. I mean, you still know you’re on an airplane. I went upstairs and discovered that it was a bit quieter up there. Yet another reason to sit on the upper deck.

On this trip upstairs, I pushed past the coach seats and headed into business class. Everyone was doting on the seats, but I went straight to the front where they had two Airbus engineers set up in their stations. Basically, they had a large area of the bulkhead cut out and outfitted with instruments showing exactly what the pilots were seeing on their gauges (at right). The two men at the station were taking copious notes when they weren’t talking to the growing crowd around them. That’s where I learned what our takeoff weight was along with other interesting technical facts. (Ok, they’re probably only interesting to me, so I’ll leave them out.)

I then walked toward the front and made my way down the main staircase to the lower deck. There was a sitting area and a side bar, but it was very crowded, so I just kept going through. That’s when I decided to visit my office, er, the lav. There are a bunch of lavs on this plane, but the one I picked seemed to be the nicest one. It’s the first time I’ve seen a commercial aircraft with a window (at left), and it’s the largest lav I’ve seen since the 777 handicapped lav. There’s PLENTY of room in there for, oh, say, having a lengthy political discourse with an acquaintance, and you get a view.

At that point, we had made our way up the coast toward Monterey and already started our return. Though I had expected a two hour flight, the flight attendants told us that we would shortly be beginning our descent and we would need to be seated. This time, I decided to park myself in a coach seat on the right side behind the wing so I could get a different view. I had been told that the ailerons really move around during turbulence to offset the flexing wing, so I hoped to see some of that. There were a couple of bumps, but I didn’t really see the ailerons move much.

I’m glad I picked this seat, because I had a nice view of Anacapa and Santa Cruz Islands before we passed right over LAX (at right). Then we turned east just north of Long Beach (I tried to pick out my house), and looped around for final approach to runway 25L. The graceful glide toward the runway was shattered when the gear made a very loud noise as it deployed. I hoped we hadn’t dropped something, and apparently we didn’t. We landed with a thud and taxied back to where we started.

As I walked off, I noticed there was a spot where a seat should have been but it wasn’t there. I remembered seeing this on the Singapore seat map and thought it looked strange, so I asked about it. It turns out that is the emergency escape hatch from the underfloor crew rest area. So all A380s will have that missing seat. Of course, that led me to ask to see the crew rest area. They were kind enough to let us go down below to find 12 rather small bunks (at left). Compared to other crew rest areas I’ve seen, it did look pretty nice though. After that, it was time to leave the plane and get to work.

We can talk about economics of the plane, whether it will succeed in various markets, blah, blah, blah, but this isn’t the time for that. Something about flying a brand new airplane just makes me act like a little kid again. I simply, truly, enjoyed the ride and forgot about everything else. I think the smile on my face says it all.

If you’d like to see all my pictures in their original sizes, visit http://images.crankyflier.com/A380_Flight/.

I kept the title of this post simple because the plane needs no other introduction. We’ve been talking about this thing for years and years now and finally, it has entered commercial service. What can I say about it?

As with all new planes, I want to go for a ride.

The first plane was delivered to Singapore Airlines earlier this month and it went into service last Thursday between Singapore and Sydney. As more planes arrive we’ll see London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and San Francisco added to the route map. Nobody else will even operate the thing until later next year (Emirates), so for now, Singapore is your only shot. Let’s just take a look.

Despite all Airbus’ early promises, there is no gym and no movie theater. No, it’s just a bunch of seats, as most people predicted. Business Class and Coach don’t appear to be much different than what Singapore introduced earlier this year. Coach has the same standard 32″ pitch you’ll find on the rest of their long haul fleet. Business, on the other hand, has a little more room (pitch and width) than the already roomy standard on the 777-300s. But it’s First Class where things are really different.

Technically, there is no First Class on this plane. They’re calling it Suite Class, and it ain’t cheap. You can learn all about it here, but let’s go over some highlights.

The product seems to be similar to what Emirates pioneered onboard - the private suite. Well, it’s not entirely private because the walls don’t go all the way to the ceiling, but it’s pretty close. I wonder if putting the walls to the ceiling is some sort of safety issue? Anyway, it has everything you’d expect with a suite. Full flat bed, big tv screen, etc. But there are only twelve of these suites on each plane and they’re nestled up in the nose. I’d guess that 99.99999999% of the world will never even have a shot at flying this. So what else is there to love about this plane?

The thing I keep hearing over and over is that it’s a very quiet ride. That seems to be the only thing that really differentiates it in the eyes of the passenger in back. Business Class is all upstairs and actually takes up 2/3 of the cabin. The last third, along with 3/4 of the bottom deck is Coach. You can see the seat map here.

Unless you’re traveling in a group of three, it looks like the place to be in coach is on the upper deck. There it’s 2-4-2 instead of 3-4-3 and that makes a big difference for me. Then again, depending upon how many jet bridges they use, that could be the last part of the plane to get off.

A couple other things to note, the fuselage tapers in the back but they don’t seem to reduce the number of seats in each row. It might be a bit tighter back there. And what’s up with row 47? There appears to be only three seats in the middle there with an empty spot where the fourth should be. Maybe it’s a black hole.

The size of this thing is just incredible. Even though it looks pretty stumpy in person, that full second deck means Singapore can get 100 more seats on this plane versus their 747s. Even with that, they have only 471 seats onboard. Still, those extra 100 seats will help in places like London and Tokyo where they can’t add another flight because the airport is stuffed to the gills at peak hours.

I imagine the people at Airbus are happy to finally have this aircraft in service. Congratulations to them on delivering the first truly new widebody since the 777 back in 1995.

As I mentioned earlier, I was fortunate enough to be invited to the A380 welcoming event this evening at LAX. You’ll be happy to know that I took almost 70 pictures from just about every angle of the plane you can imagine. Actually, only a few of you will be happy to hear that. The rest will be bored out of your minds. So, if you’d like to see them all, you can browse through them at crankyflier.com/A380. For the rest of you, I’ve taken a handful of cool shots and put them here for you.

They tried to make us feel special early on when our shuttle bus started on its way with a police escort. I have no idea why we had a police escort, because he didn’t flash his lights or run traffic signals or anything fun like that. When we arrived at the Flight Path Learning Center in the old Imperial Terminal, we could see the plane parked just outside with a throng of onlookers trying to get a good view through the chain link fence.

There were a lot of reactions as the plane came into view, but the most common was “Wow, that is really short.” It’s true. it does look short when compared to its incredible height. See for yourself:

We were greeted by what had to have been one of the best looking cabin crews around. Or maybe all Qantas flight attendants look like that in which case I need to fly them more often. I’ve never been to the Flight Path before, and the museum was a great place for LA aviation buffs. It had a ton of memorabilia from LA’s history, but I’ll definitely have to head back another time because my focus for this trip was on the A380.

While many people headed straight for the bar, my friend Paul and I went right for the aircraft. We were initially told we would only be able to see it from a distance, but that proved to be untrue. The Airport Police set up a perimeter around the plane and let us get extremely close. We couldn’t go in, and I wasn’t happy about that. This plane doesn’t have much of an interior - it’s just ballast tanks and test equipment. That made me want to go in even more, but oh well.

I spoke with some of the Qantas representatives, and they were obviously very excited to see the plane out at LAX. When they take delivery next summer (2008), the first route will be LAX to Sydney. The aircraft will see 501 people with First Class at the front of the bottom deck and Business Class at the front of the top deck. Economy will be at the back of both decks. The airline is planning to improve the seating in all classes of service, but naturally they won’t tell anyone what they’re doing before it happens.

Ok, enough of me talking now. Let’s walk through the pictures.

Here’s a closeup of the nose. As you can see, there’s a blank space where I assume Fedex used to be before they canceled. Airbus looks to have hastily prepared this plane for the display. They didn’t bother to remove the UPS logo (they’ve also canceled their order) and the plane was pretty grimy:

This is one of my favorite shots, because it shows it in comparison with the 747 pulling in behind. I’m so used to seeing the cockpit on the upper deck of the 747 that having it down below looked really odd here. It makes it look like a caveman with a really big sloped forehead. I wouldn’t call this the most attractive aircraft around:

You can tell that this truly is a test aircraft. This is on the underside of the wing, just behind the slats on the leading edge. I’m just going to guess that it’s speed tape holding testing equipment and NOT duct tape:

That is one heck of a wing and look at all those wheels. Also, notice the faint rectangular box just underneath the upper deck doors. Anyone know what that is? Is it a slide?:

The horizontal stabilizer looks like big enough to double as a 737 wing:

The curvature of the wing from behind is just incredible:

The size of that wingbox reminds me of a massive Russian transport aircraft. It takes a lot in the middle to support those gigantic wings. Note what I believe is a tailstrike protection device under the rear. (Anyone know better?):

It was tough enough narrowing it down to these few images. If you want to see more, go to crankyflier.com/A380. As you can see, this was a pretty amazing experience. With only around 130 orders for the plane right now and no American carriers placing orders, this could be the closest I get to the plane for a long time.

Well, the A380 has now arrived at LAX and I’ve got the video to prove it. I went out to the airport this morning to watch it arrive. When I got there at just after 8a, there were already a good number of people waiting, as you can see down below.

In ‘n Out decided to open at 8a, 2 1/2 hours earlier than normal to help feed the crowd. They even put out a big tank of water for everyone to keep hydrated. They can now add “airline dork-friendly” to their title as the greatest burger place around.

At about 845a, the area really started to fill up, but there weren’t as many people as I expected. A lot of people were listening to the tower frequency and they said the controller told an arriving aircraft that the A380 would be landing around 910a. Of course, that got everyone up looking around but there was nothing to be seen. I moved out to the corner of Sepulveda and Lincoln becasue

By 915a, many more people had arrived (including a friend of mine who just flew in from San Francisco) but again, still not as packed as I would have guessed. Lincoln was closed by the police and you can see that people started trickling into the road. There were people standing on the roof of a rental car shop on Sepulveda as well as people standing on top of a bus. The police were out in force but they weren’t hassling anyone. Everyone was in a great mood.

As the time approached, you could feel the buzz building. Thanks to a relatively low marine layer, the arriving aircraft blended in to the clouds until they were a couple minutes out. People were just waiting anxiously with one hand on their cameras. Finally, we saw a four engine aircraft approach in the distance. As it got closer, we realized it was a United 747-400. At first, everyone was disappointed, but I realized later that it would provide great perspective for the A380 which approached right after. So, I took video of the United 747 arriving. Here it is:

And don’t get angry, United fans. The “Stupid, United” comment was only because it wasn’t the A380. I always like watching a 747 land. So then right after that, we saw what had to be the A380 lining up. It’s definitely not the best looking plane around, but man is it big. Here’s the video you’ve been waiting for:

So there it is. The plane was surprisingly quiet, but it’s size was incredible. It’s probably tough to get that feeling from the video, but when you’re right underneath it, it’s pretty cool.

I’ll be at the special event tonight for invited guests only, so hopefully I’ll get some great still shots out of that one.

Do you love enormous airplanes? How about German airlines? Is this picture way too fuzzy to satisfy your needs?

If you answered yes to these questions, head on over to this website where Lufthansa is having a drawing for one person to take the VIP tour of the A380 when it arrives at JFK on March 19. The same time that plane lands at JFK, Qantas will be sponsoring a flight to LAX, and that is where I’ll be that day.

No flight is included here (don’t get greedy), but you can hobnob with the Airbus and Lufthansa elites if you win. And if you do win, I want pictures.

I think we can now unofficially declare the A380 dead. UPS announced today that they have canceled their order for 10 freighter versions of the A380.

Since Fedex already canceled their order and Emirates converted their orders into ones for the passenger version, that leaves no takers for the A380 Freighter anymore. I would imagine Airbus will just walk away from this so they can concentrate on the passenger version, but then again it wouldn’t surprise me to see them keep chugging along with the program to save face. (I hope not.)

I know where I’ll be on March 19. Airbus has buckled under the pressure from Qantas and LA World Airports and announced it will bring an A380 to LAX on the same day it brings one to JFK.

The initial announcement said that Airbus would bring the plane to JFK, Dulles, and Chicago/O’Hare on behalf of Lufthansa. Well, Qantas wasn’t too happy about that, and they wanted to see the plane come to their huge LAX operation. Meanwhile, LAX said that Airbus had promised the airport the first visit in the US if they completed the upgrade work necessary to allow the A380 to operate. Well, they did, and now they’re getting their way.

I haven’t seen any details, but with any luck they’ll land on the north runways. I’ll be sitting at In ‘n Out watching if that’s the case.

It may not be much of a commercial success at this point, and it may not be the most attractive plane flying, but it’s still going to be really cool to see the A380 fly nonetheless. Those of you living in New York, Washington, and Chicago will get to see the plane on its first trip to the US next month.

The plane arrives at New York/JFK on March 19. The next day it heads to Chicago/O’Hare and then it makes a few other stops before reportedly going to Washington/Dulles on the evening of March 26.

If you live in the area, head on out to the airports because it’s going to be a site to be seen.

It’s true that I think the A380 wasn’t the right strategic move for Airbus (smaller is better), and it’s one of the uglier planes out there, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to seeing it enter service.

Unfortunately, we’re going to have to wait a little longer. Airbus came out today saying what many had already predicted, there will likely be more A380 delays. This is now the third delay that has been announced.

It was a cryptic message today saying only that “from what is known today, there will be further delays.” No new timeline has been set, so we’ll just have to keep waiting.

For customers, this means that new routes may be on hold for a little while. Airlines have started planning around their upcoming aircraft deliveries, and now they’re scrambling to figure out how to get more planes. Lufthansa, for example, ordered 5 more A330s yesterday to help bridge the gap. I would expect others to either do the same or cut back on growth for the short term.

Forget about the questionable business case and the fact that it is one ugly airplane for a second. It’s still pretty cool looking to see it flying in formation with three other A380s. Thanks to the IAG Blog for pointing out this video on the Airbus site.