Airbus Launches 800 Passenger Jumbo Jet

voma writes "Airbus, the world's largest planemaker, will unveil its A380, a $16 billion wager that airlines will order giant aircraft to ferry passengers between major airports over the next 20 years. The double-decker A380 plane has a wing span of 80 meters (262 feet), almost the length of an American football field. It's 73 meters long and weighs as much as 569 tons (1.2 million pounds) when fully loaded for takeoff. It will have a range of 8,000 nautical miles."

Comments

Wings

[basingwerk]

The wings for this plane are so big that they are floated out to see on a huge barge down the Dee Estuary in Wales, and taken by ship to be assembled with the reat of the plane in Toulouse, France. On the way, the wings pass on a special vehicle through several hunred yards of farm land and cross a main road. Thise Europeans know how to do big engineering projects.