Airbus SAS’s 555-seat, double-decker A380, the largest passenger plane ever built, made its U.S. debut today, with planes landing within 18 minutes of each other in New York and Los Angeles.
Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Qantas Airways Ltd. are testing airports scheduled to accept the plane, which has a wingspan of 262 feet, a fuselage 239 feet long and stands nearly 80 feet from the ground to the top of its tail.
The visits come as Airbus seeks to draw attention to the A380’s future in commercial service and away from the disastrous developments of the last year. Trouble installing wiring in the A380 has made the plane two years late and created financial difficulties that led to Airbus’s first full-year loss in 2006.
Lufthansa has ordered Europe’s biggest fleet of the A380, with 15 planes on order, and plans to make the plane its flagship aircraft once it receives the first shipment in 2009. Deliveries are almost two years late because of problems with wiring installation.
The Lufthansa plane, MSN 7, the first A380 built, landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport at 12:11 p.m. New York time, greeted by a small crowd of fewer than 100, mainly journalists, under bright blue skies. The second plane, MSN 1, touching down at Los Angeles International Airport under skies obscured by mist and fog at 9:29 a.m. local time. Both aircraft will go to other customers when tests are finished.
The A380 is scheduled to begin commercial flights with Singapore Airlines Ltd. at the end of this year. The aircraft, which seats 555 in standard three-class configuration and is certified to carry as many as 873 people, will overtake Boeing Co.’s 420-seat 747-700 model as the world’s biggest airliner.
Los Angeles will be the first U.S. destination, served by Australian airline Qantas. The plane today was flown by Airbus pilots assisted by a Qantas ground crew.
U.S. airport operators are investing in runway and terminal expansions to handle the plane, which at 1.2 million pounds will outweigh the 747-700 by more than 324,000 pounds.
Lufthansa is testing the plane with flights to New York, Washington and Hong Kong from its main Frankfurt hub to determine how well the airports handle the model in regular service. It’s the Cologne, Germany-based airline’s first chance to test the A380 with its own personnel.
Airbus has 156 orders from 15 buyers. Initially, however, the plane may have little impact on the U.S. market, where it doesn’t have a single customer since both FedEx Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc. both canceled orders for the cargo version of the plane.
“I don’t we’ll see enough of the A380s at U.S. airports over the next few years to really change anything,” said Paul Nisbet, an analyst for JSA Research in Newport, Rhode Island, who recommends a “buy” on shares of Airbus’s rival Boeing Co.
