Airbus A380

Enjoy ALL OF Air

"A380" redirects here. For other uses, see A380 (disambiguation).

A380

An Emirates A380 on final approach to land at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport

Role Wide-body, double-deck jet airliner

National origin Multi-national

Manufacturer Airbus

First flight 27 April 2005

Introduction 25 October 2007

with Singapore Airlines

Status In production, in service

Primary users Emirates

Singapore Airlines

Qantas

Lufthansa

See Operators section for others

Produced 2004 – present

Number built 77 as of 3 February 2012

Unit cost US$389.9 million (approx. €300 million or GB£252 million)

             The Airbus A380 is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine jet airliner manufactured by the European corporation Airbus, a subsidiary of EADS. It is the world's largest passenger airliner and, due to its size, many airports have had to expand their facilities to properly accommodate it. Designed to challenge Boeing's monopoly in the large-aircraft market, the A380 made its maiden flight on 27 April 2005 and entered initial commercial service in October 2007 with Singapore Airlines. The aircraft was known as the Airbus A3XX during much of its development, before receiving the A380 designation.

The A380's upper deck extends along the entire length of the fuselage, with a width equivalent to a wide-body aircraft. This allows for an A380-800's cabin with 478 square metres (5,145.1 sq ft) of floor space; 49% more floor space than the next-largest airliner, the Boeing 747-400 with 321 square metres (3,455.2 sq ft), and provides seating for 525 people in a typical three-class configuration or up to 853 people in all-economy class configurations. The A380-800 has a design range of 15,400 kilometres (8,300 nmi; 9,600 mi), sufficient to fly from New York to Hong Kong, and a cruising speed of Mach 0.85 (about 900 km/h or 560 mph at cruising altitude).

As of June 2012 there had been 257 firm orders for the A380, of which 77 have been delivered. The largest order, for 90 aircraft, was from

 

Background

         In the summer of 1988, a group of 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, Deutsche Aerospace AG, British Aerospace, CASA) to propose new technologies for its future aircraft designs. The designs would be presented in 1992 and the most competitive designs would be used.

     

               The first completed A380 at the "A380 Reveal" event held 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 odd side-by-side combination of two fuselages from the A340, which was Airbus's largest jet at the time.The 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 design, in line with traditional hub-and-spoke theory as opposed to the point-to-point theory of the Boeing 777, after conducting an extensive market analysis with over 200 focus groups.

                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 A380, with 50 firm orders from six launch customers. 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 €11 billion when the first aircraft was completed.

             

Production

                                  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 their size, traditional transportation methods proved unfeasible, so they are brought to the assembly hall (the Jean-Luc Lagardère Plant) in Toulouse in France by specialized surface transportation, though some parts are moved by the A300-600ST Beluga aircraft used in the construction of other Airbus models.A380 components are provided by suppliers from around the world; the five largest contributors, by value, are Rolls-Royce, Safran, United Technologies, General Electric and Goodrich.

                                                                     Transporting A380 components from the port of Bordeaux

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 convoys. The 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 Filton in Bristol and Broughton in North Wales, then transported by barge to Mostyn docks, where the ship adds them to its cargo. In Saint-Nazaire in western France, the ship trades 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 Toulouse. The parts are not handled directly.

                            After assembly, the aircraft are flown to Hamburg Finkenwerder Airport (XFW) to be furnished and painted. It takes 3,600 L (950 US gal) of paint to cover the 3,100 m2 (33,000 sq ft) exterior of an A380. Airbus sized the production facilities and supply chain for a production rate of four A380s per month.

Engines

                                                      A Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine on the wing of an Airbus A380

The A380 is available with two types of turbofan engines, the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 (variants A380-841, −842 and −843F) or the Engine Alliance GP7000 (A380-861 and −863F). The Trent 900 is a derivative of the Trent 800, and the GP7000 has roots from the GE90 and PW4000. The Trent 900 core is a scaled version of the Trent 500, but incorporates the swept fan technology of the stillborn Trent 8104.The GP7200 has a GE90-derived core and PW4090-derived fan and low-pressure turbo-machinery.Noise reduction was an important requirement in the A380 design, and particularly affects engine design. Both engine types allow the aircraft to achieve QC/2 departure and QC/0.5 arrival noise limits under the Quota Count system set by London Heathrow Airport, which is a key destination for the A380.

The A380 was initially planned without thrust reversers, incorporating sufficient braking capacity to do without them. However Airbus elected to equip the two inboard engines with thrust reversers in a late stage of development.The two outboard engines do not have reversers, reducing the amount of debris stirred up during landing. The A380 has electrically actuated thrust reversers, giving them better reliability than their pneumatic or hydraulic equivalents, in addition to saving weight.

The A380 was used to demonstrate the viability of a synthetic fuel comprising standard jet fuel with a natural-gas-derived component. On 1 February 2008, a three-hour test flight operated between Britain and France, with one of the A380's four engines using a mix of 60% standard jet kerosene and 40% gas to liquids (GTL) fuel supplied by Shell. The aircraft needed no modification to use the GTL fuel, which was designed to be mixed with normal jet fuel. Sebastien Remy, head of Airbus SAS's alternative fuel programme, said the GTL used was no cleaner in CO2 terms than standard fuel but it had local air quality benefits because the GTL portion contains no sulphur.