A380 First Flight News

Sorry for yet another new thread on this, but I think this warrants it.

Airbus have just sent me the following email -

Dear Richard Price, The Airbus team is pleased to include you among the privileged visitors who are offered the possibility to watch the live broadcast of the A380 First flight on Airbus.com. We would like to inform you that there is a strong possibility that the A380 will fly next week. We cannot give you an exact date and time as maiden flights are subject to many conditions that we cannot control such as weather conditions. Therefore, from Monday 25 April, please consult our web site every morning (GMT+2) for more information. Just before the day of the first flight, the site will display pages dedicated to the event, including a special A380 lounge reserved for watching the live broadcast of the first flight.

--
Then it goes on to give me a login for the video feed (which wont be posted here, it specifically says that it will not support simultaneous feeds).

Looks like its going ahead!

Thanks for the update.
I hope all goes well with the flight.

Airbus have tentatively put the first flight date as ....


27th April 2005 (dependant on weather etc).

www.airbus.com...
news.bbc.co.uk...

Fingers crossed!

[edit on 25/4/2005 by RichardPrice]

I'll have my fingers crossed for this flight.
I really hope it goes smoothly.

This will be an historic event.

This will truly be something else. I can't wait to see footage of this humungous aircraft leaving ground and heading for the sky. I'm still amazed that the 747 can get into the air.

The A380 is due to take off at 0830 GMT, 1030Zoulou, from Toulouse Launiac test flight center of Airbus. If meteo permits, the world's biggest PAX plane will leave ground for its first flight!

All this can be followed on www.airbus.com

ATM, it's even more than hard to log on the website, due to the mass access there (12'000 Airbus employees looking on the 'net the first steps of their baby, that makes lag )

[edit on 27-4-2005 by Element]

And its off, no issues!


Beautiful sight.

Yeah, she did it!!! Hope it's the first of a long serie of flights!

Congratulations to the Airbus, EADS, BAE crew who did so well to make here flight...

First image -

news.tf1.fr...

Frenchies are happy, that's the less to say... Images there aswell...

watched it on sky news australia, quite a beautiful sight!

Originally posted by Element
news.tf1.fr...

Frenchies are happy, that's the less to say... Images there aswell...

I missed the previous threads on this. Thanks to google, I translated the above site into English and came to know what I giant this plane is

Anyone has an idea about the size of zepplins?

www.ciderpresspottery.com...

A little bit of googeling should bring you more occurences

An A380 is way smaller!

Airliners.net has been updated with A380 takeoff shots!

The A380 001 Has safely landed at 14h22, after a 4 hours long flight, with optimal meteorological and aerological conditions.

fr.bluewin.ch...:brf037

(In swiss, p2p if you want an english translation)

Seem's that all the test intended could be entirely achieved.


Congratulations to EADS, BAE, Airbus Industries and all the people who contributed to this huge step forward in the aviation history!

Great news
It's still a long wait until we actually start using them but they're off to a good start with a smooth first flight.

I posted some videos on jet plane history a few days ago in this thread:
Jet plane history from the BBC, Whittle, the Comet, etc..

I'll try and get a copy of the A380 fight to add to it.

It's a much over-used and abused term but the A380 taking off and landing looked truely awesome.

Originally posted by Element
Yeah, she did it!!! Hope it's the first of a long serie of flights!

Congratulations to the Airbus, EADS, BAE crew who did so well to make here flight...

Dont forget GE for the engines.

At takeoff, the prototype plane weighed 421 tonnes, the heaviest civil airliner to date, Airbus said. When fully furnished, it will weigh 600 tonnes. Another 179 tonnes than the test flight. Gets a bit scary. Good Luck to all that fly in it....