Word: a380
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...captain not said "take off" before the A380 left the ground, I might not have noticed. Movement was barely perceptible in the spacious business-class seat unless I watched the touchscreen in front of me and saw the plane move along the runway. Or looked out the window. Both decks of the Airbus behemoth were as quiet as if you were in a plane with the engines shut off. But the new A380 already had its four Rolls-Royce Trent 900s guzzling the 46,000 lbs. of fuel the 90-minute ride was expected to consume. The nose...
...Airbus had brought its problematic pride and joy to New York, part of a 12-day "route-proving" tour and I was along for the press preview. After a series of accelerated altitude climbs to get to an airspace directed by JFK airport flight control, the A380 cruised at 39,000 ft. At full capacity, holding 519 people, the plane would be 569 metric tons or 1.3 million lbs. And, in mid-flight, the wings would tilt up 12 feet to hold the load - looking not unlike the downward sweeping motion of a bird...
...Airbus and Lufthansa, the manufacturer and close client, had picked JFK's Hangar 19 to launch the plane in New York. It was also the spot where Pan Am had begun the maiden voyage of the Boeing 747 in 1970. And it is in Boeing's shadow that the A380 flies. It hasn't helped Airbus that the $300 million plane was two years late to its own party. Airbus suffered a terrible financial year due to A380 production delays, costing it an estimated $6.61 billion in forecast profit. The company also plans to cut 10,000 jobs. It estimates...
...short circuit at Airbus has turned out to be much more serious than expected. For several months, officials at the giant aerospace company have explained away the delays dogging their biggest project, the €12 billion superjumbo A380[an error occurred while processing this directive] plane, by blaming the wiring. Each A380 has about 500 km of electrical cables that need to be configured individually for different customers (so the explanation went), and that was proving far more complex than anticipated. Last week, the story changed. Airbus postponed the A380's launch once again, but acknowledged that the company...
...just because he is new both to Airbus and to the aerospace industry (he's a manufacturing expert from the French glass company Saint Gobain), but also because the company is facing its biggest crisis since its founding in 1970. The company has slashed its delivery schedule for the A380 from one plane in 2006 to zero, from nine planes in 2007 to one, and from 25 planes in 2008 to 13. That's a significant setback for the behemoth's main customers, including Emirates and Singapore Airlines, which now must revise their expansion plans. They are expected to demand...