What are some interesting facts about the Airbus A380?
The Airbus A380 is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine jet airliner manufactured by European manufacturer Airbus. It is the world’s largest passenger airliner, and the airports at which it operates have upgraded facilities to accommodate it.
It was initially named Airbus A3XX and designed to challenge Boeing’s monopoly in the large-aircraft market. The A380 made its first flight on 27 April 2005 and entered commercial service on 25 October 2007 with Singapore Airlines. An improved version, the A380plus, is under development.
It depends on your definition of “interesting” but I hope these facts are interesting enough:
1. The A380 is 24.1 meters high, 80 meters wide, and 72.7 meters long, equivalent to 2 blue whales length. The plane weighs approximately 590 tons.
2. The wings of the A380 is so huge that 70 family cars can park on each side.
3. The aircraft has 4 million individual components, produced by 1500 companies, in 30 different countries.
4. The skin of the aircraft is made of aluminium and reinforce glass fibre (freaking glass!!!) (GLARE – Glass laminate aluminium reinforced epoxy)
5. 3600 litres of paint is needed to paint the whole aircraft.
6. Only the inner two engines are used for taxi and reverse thrust. Because of the size of the wingspan, the outer engines usually hangs above grass or dirt shoulders along the runway. Thus, they are put to idle so they will not produce massive amount of dust.
7. Speaking of wings, the wingspan is 79.75m, barely squeezing the most airport regulation of 80m.
8. The airports must be heavily upgraded to handle its width and weight. Sydney Airport alone spent $128 million on upgrades.
9. The average plane costs $375 million dollars to buy.
So yea, just a few interesting facts that I think are more interesting to share. I may add more later on!
As of March 2018, Airbus had received 331 firm orders and delivered 223 aircraft; Emirates is the biggest A380 customer with 162 ordered of which 102 have been delivered.
