Los Angeles – As it lumbers in for a landing at Los Angeles International Airport today, the world’s largest passenger jet will make its West Coast debut in what could be the biggest spectacle at the facility in more than three decades.
Officials expect tens of thousands of onlookers to line airport fences to see the Airbus A380, an eight-story-high behemoth with a double-decked cabin and a wingspan nearly the length of a football field.
“We’re planning for the largest turnout since the Concorde came in 1974,” said Paul Haney, deputy executive director of airports and security for Los Angeles World Airports. “This could be huge, and we’re doing everything possible to be ready.”
Southern California is experiencing an uplift from the massive jet: More than 100 suppliers here contributed to the aircraft’s construction, pumping $1.5 billion into the region’s economy since 2003.
Los Angeles fought to host this pivotal moment in U.S. aviation history. Despite having promised to bring the A380 here first if improvements were made at LAX, as the airport is known, Airbus announced earlier this year plans to land the jumbo jet in New York instead.
LAX officials sent a strongly worded letter to company executives in Toulouse, France, and Airbus relented just three weeks ago.
So at 9:30 a.m., one of two inaugural U.S. test flights is scheduled to touch down at LAX from Toulouse, about the same time a second aircraft will land at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport from Frankfurt, Germany.
About 550 of Lufthansa’s frequent fliers, along with reporters and news crews, will be aboard the New York flight. Several dozen technicians will arrive on the LAX test jet, which will carry primarily instrumentation and water-filled tanks designed to adjust the aircraft’s center of gravity.
But beyond the short-term buzz generated by the A380’s arrival is the question of what mark the jet ultimately will make on aviation history.
Airlines say that when they start to fly the 555-seat jet commercially in the next few years, it will allow them to carry more passengers per trip, lowering costs.
The super jumbo jet also could help space-constrained airports by allowing carriers to combine several flights into one.
Even so, the A380 is not expected to transform the industry the way its predecessor, Boeing’s venerable 747, did when it arrived in 1970 and finally helped make flying affordable for the masses. Not enough A380s have been sold so far to fuel this kind of change, analysts say.
