The Airbus A380 Invades America

Amid a barrage of news headlines and scrupulously-framed promotional photographs, two Airbus A380 superjumbo airliners touched down on American soil for the first time yesterday, following a test flight intended to demonstrate how the aircraft handles a full passenger load.

How was the ride? Joe Sharky from the New York Times was aboard the A380 that carried 460 passengers on a flight from Frankfurt, Germany to New York's JFK, and he described the experience thus:

There was one immediate impression. Airbus has boasted that A380 technology makes it the quietest of the big jets (an implied comparison to noisy 747s from its rival, Boeing). Passengers and flight attendants were impressed, if not with the sound of silence, then at least with the absence of loud engine noise.

Two hours into the flight, Susanne von der Krone, a Lufthansa flight attendant who was serving lunch, lauded the peace and quiet. “The less noise, the more comfortable you feel,” she said.

The interior design of the cabin and seats, as well as the meals, were good quality, but not necessarily what passengers will find when Lufthansa actually begins commercial A380 service with a customized in-flight package in 2009.

Lunch consisted of tuna and veal hors d’oeuvres, a choice of beef fillet or anglerfish with eggplant ragout, a cheese plate and fresh berries. All cabin classes got the same food, with paper napkins.

Wine and champagne flowed freely. Well before we reached the mid-Atlantic, the aisles of the plane — wide enough for a person to squeeze past a meal cart — resembled a lively cocktail party. Passengers mingled in the aisles and wandered from deck to deck, some congregating around a bar separating coach and first-class sections on the lower deck.

Peter Greenberg, the embedded reporter from the "Today Show" found another feature to love during the flight: The TailCam. Jaunted channels Greenberg to report that "Lufthansa has its own version of JenniCam, with no Jenni, but lots of live jumbo jet ass. The tail camera shows a live continuous, wide angle shot of the plane in flight."

Although about a dozen US airports have undertaken the modifications necessary to accommodate the A380 -- improvements that mainly involve widening taxiways and installing upper-level jetways for passengers seated on the giant plane's upper deck -- no American passenger airlines have ordered the A380. For a time, the A380 found a home within the fleets of American freight carriers FedEx and UPS, but both cancelled their orders in recent months as a result of the delays that have plagued the A380 program. Doh!

As if to underscore that point, Boeing was not idle yesterday either. Although the A380s got all the photo ops, Boeing used the opportunity to remind the world that work on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is proceeding on schedule, with the first 787 set for rollout on July 8, 2007, and the first delivery (to All Nippon Airways) taking place in May 2008.

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(Photos: Top, A380 taxing at JFK, by Vidiot; Bottom, A380 landing at LAX by casual clicks)