The Airbus A-380 Is A Big Damn Airplane

I’m an airplane nut. There was a time in college when I aspired to be a Navy F-14 pilot, before my eyesight decided to slide a few points off of 20-20. I abandoned the idea of being a Naval aviator because I refused to accept flying a “fling wing” (a helicopter) or be relegated to hauling plastic dog poop in a rusty transport plane out of Subic Bay Philippines. It was jets or nuthin’.

Later on I started working on being a private pilot, until the FAA bureaucracy ended my flying endeavors with medical limitations the details of which I won’t bore you with here. Any way, I’ve spent a great deal of time building model airplanes, fooling around behind the controls of a Cessna 150, riding in airliners, and even more time reading about airplanes and aviation.

To date I have chosen to not assault you with my aviation knowledge and interests here in my blog, but now I’m asking that you humor me because I’m about to make an exception and I hope to make it worth your while reading my revelations.

Tomorrow, at 6:00 am EST in France, the European aviation manufacturing consortium Airbus will roll out for public viewing their new A-380 airliner, the largest passenger airplane ever produced.

Large is an understatement.

The newspapers and TV news will be filled with simplistic reviews telling you things like that the plane’s wingspan is almost as long as a football field and it holds 555 passengers, 109 more than the capacity of the Boeing 747.

Let me share with you some more details I’ve gotten from the Airbus web site that will put things into perspective, especially if you are a member of the “traveling public” like I am.

Did I say that this plane is huge already? Huge as in …

The fuselage is 238 feet long. The wingspan is 262 feet. The vertical tail is 80’ high and the horizontal stabilizer has a 100’ span. The Canadian regional jets operated by Delta that serve our little local airport have a smaller wingspan that the tail span of this beast.

The plane’s empty weight is 611,729 pounds and it has a maximum takeoff weight of 1,234,588 pounds, more than 600 tons.

Reversing a recent trend of building new airliners with only two engines, the A-340's giant size dictates the use of four (two on each wing) Trent 977 gas turbine engines developing 76,500 pounds of thrust each (thats 306,000 pounds total, boys and girls.)

The fuselage is 28’ high and 23’ wide. The pilots butt will be over 20' off the runway when the airplane is sitting on the runway. That's got to make things interesting when you're waiting for the wheels to touch. You could understand having a bumpy landing every now and then until he gets the hang of things. "Excuse me captain...did you actually land this thing, or were we shot down? Just wondering..."

In tourist class seating there are three seats on each side and four seats in the middle of two isles. It has 49% more floor space and 35% more seating that a 747-400. There are 17 food service galleys and 17 bathrooms.

There is room of 356 passengers including. 22 first class seats on the main deck and 199 (including 96 business class seats) on the upper deck. Each seat will have its own separate armrest. (My aching butt and the rest of my 6’3” frame will certainly enjoy that feature—not having to play dueling elbows with my seatmate.) There are two stairways between decks—one front and one rear.

There will be 12 flight attendants on the main deck and 8 attendants on the upper deck. “Would you like coffee, tea, or a road map to the bathroom, sir?”

It will take 48 minutes to pump 67,364 gallons of jet fuel from four hoses into its fuel tanks. The tanks can actually hold 81,893 gallons of fuel weighing over 247,000 pounds.

They optimistically project that it will take 28 minutes to load 555 passengers onto the two levels of seating through two jet ways (one on each level.) It will take 14 minutes to get everyone off the plane. (Based on my experience on much smaller planes, the A-380 must come with conveyor belts and/or built in electric cattle prods to get this herd moving at this rate.)

It can fly with a full passenger load nearly 14,400 miles without refueling. The expected fuel efficiency should allow operation at costs between 15% to 20% less than the existing 747’s.

They already have over 100 orders from airlines for use on international routes. The airports into which the A-380 will fly will have to modify one or two gates to include the double (or even triple) jet way tunnels and make clearances for all of the four fuel trucks, catering trucks, baggage carts, and other support vehicles.

And leave it to me to do it, but there is one final gruesome statistic that will probably escape mention in the media. With 578 persons on board (555 passengers, 20 flight attendants, and 3 crew members,) if one of these monsters happens to fall out of the sky and kill all aboard, the death toll will exceed the sum total of all of the lives lost in commercial aviation accidents since 1996, including the airplanes lost on 9/11.

Now isn’t that interesting???