Airbus debuted the world's largest passenger plane in the United States yesterday when two of its A380 superjumbos touched down in New York and Los Angeles.
The first US flights for the 555-seat, double-decker plane kicked off a series of exercises to ensure that the giant aircraft is compatible with major US airports, which have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrades to accommodate it.
New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and Los Angeles International Airport are spending about $300 million to widen runways and provide special docking equipment for the plane, which has a wingspan almost the length of an American football field.
Yesterday's flight to New York from Frankfurt was operated with Germany's Lufthansa, carrying about 500 Airbus and Lufthansa employees, along with some Airbus suppliers and VIPs. The plane is set to fly to Chicago's O'Hare Airport today and to Washington's Dulles Airport on March 25.
The flight to Los Angeles from Toulouse, France, was operated with Australia's Qantas, carrying only its flight crew and a squad of engineers. That flight was hurriedly added to the schedule after Los Angeles officials berated Airbus for making rival JFK the first landing point in the United States, people close to the matter said yesterday.
Both Lufthansa and Qantas are customers for the A380, which is set to enter service with Singapore Airlines in October.
Airbus has spent more than $10 billion developing the A380, which has a list price of about $319 million. So far it has racked up 156 orders from 14 customers but has yet to score an order from a US airline.
"We look forward to talking to United and Northwest," said Airbus marketing chief John Leahy on the tarmac at JFK after watching the plane land.
UAL Corp.'s United Airlines and bankrupt Northwest Airlines Corp. are the most likely US carriers to eventually buy the plane, given their extensive long-haul Asian routes.
Signing up a US airline would be a financial and morale boost for Airbus. Delays in producing the superjumbo, now two years overdue, have dragged Airbus's parent company, Europe's EADS, into billions of dollars in losses and corporate turmoil.
The aircraft was designed to challenge Boeing Co.'s dominance in the market for very large planes, which it has virtually had to itself with its long-running 747. The latest, stretched version of the 747 is actually longer than the A380, but the European plane towers over its rival and can accommodate 90 or so more passengers in a standard configuration.
According to Airbus, the A380 makes half the noise of a 747 and is more fuel efficient, which it hopes will appeal to airlines looking to make better returns from popular transcontinental routes.
Speaking to reporters at JFK after the plane had disembarked, Mr Leahy did not deny recent reports that the plane was still 6 tons overweight. He said the excess weight was not a problem, given that it represented less than one per cent of the plane's total maximum take-off weight, which is 617 tons according to Airbus publications.
Executives of Lufthansa, which has 15 of the planes on order, said the extra weight was not an issue for them and that the plane was still within its specifications.
Mr Leahy said Airbus has interrupted production of the freight version of the A380 to focus on the passenger version and that the earliest a freighter is likely be delivered will be 2014.
Airbus currently has no freighter orders after customers including FedEx Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc. cancelled orders due to repeated delays.