| Superjumbo Airbus jets arrive at JFK |
NewsLover writes "
The latest jetliner to claim the title of world‘s biggest passenger aircraft completed its maiden voyage to the United States on Monday, flying on football field-length wings and a prayer that the American airline industry will want to buy the double-decker jumbo jet.
The first U.S. flights are a chance for the European plane builder Airbus and German airline Lufthansa AG to show off the jewel of Airbus‘ offerings to potential American buyers and to the airports they hope to turn into flight bases for the jet. The 239-foot-long A380 can seat as many as 550 passengers, hold 81,890 gallons of fuel, cruise at 560 mph and fly some 8,000 nautical miles.
Airbus hopes the A380 - designed to carry more people farther than any plane in history, though at subsonic speeds - will dominate air travel for the next two decades.
Lufthansa chief pilot Juergen Raps, who has flown the A380 before, said that despite the superjumbo jet‘s size, it was nimble and responsive.
The air show began early Monday at Frankfurt International Airport when the took off as Lufthansa Flight 8940 for the eight-hour flight to Kennedy. Onboard were 483 people, including four pilots, four Airbus crew members, 23 Lufthansa cabin crew and several hundred passengers, mostly Airbus and Lufthansa employees along with some reporters.
After the inaugural run, Lufthansa and Airbus will operate a demonstration flight to Chicago‘s O‘Hare Airport on Tuesday, before returning to New York and then Frankfurt. The plane then heads to Hong Kong and back, before continuing its journey to Washington Dulles International Airport on March 25, with a final stop at Lufthansa‘s Munich hub on March 28.
Airbus has 166 orders from 15 airlines for the new plane, which has already made tests flights in Europe and to Asia.
About a thousand onlookers lined up along fences at Los Angeles International Airport to see the plane make its West Coast debut. The facility nearly lost out on the highly anticipated landing of the A380 after Airbus announced plans to land the jet in New York instead.
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