Marveling at massive Airbus A380

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Oct 5, 2007 | by Tim Simmers

SFO -- The fact that the massive Airbus A380 dwarfs just about anything flying wasn't quite so apparent as I watched it glide effortlessly to a landing at San Francisco International Airport on Thursday on a bright, windy morning.

It was impossible to grasp the enormous size of the world's largest commercial airliner -- that is until I stood in front of it.

Contemplating this moment in local aviation history, I thought maybe Howard Hughes' famed Spruce Goose seemed a bit wilder. But this triple-deck, superjumbo jet is indeed eye-popping in its own right.

I stared at it, craning my neck up to the tip of the tail that's 80 feet high, and felt kind of dwarfed myself. It's fatter and much chunkier than any plane I've seen.

I kept looking at the ominous, bird beak-like nose as the airliner spun on the runway. Sure, it was huge. But there was something stunning about the design of that nose that made an imprint on my brain, and I won't soon forget it.

The aircraft's four massive engines were impressive. From the front, the engines swirled and whirred in a quiet efficiency. From the rear, however, the power of these engines was made apparent by the waves of super-heated rippling out into the cool air.

Oh yeah, the wingspan. Talk about wide bodies. The wings are so thick. The fact that the wingspan approaches the length of a football field left me quietly saying, "Wow," as the media throng behind and in front of me snapped pictures and rolled cameras.

I heard Airbus Chief Barry Eccleston call the plane "greener, cleaner, quieter and smarter." Clever marketing line. Maybe it fits.

As I walked up to the plane for an onboard tour, the guide cautioned: "Watch your step -- this is a test airplane. You can easily fall." That got my attention.

I climbed up the 25 or so steps to the door, glimpsing quickly at the 5-foot high tires on the plane.

The cabin, I was told, is longer in length than the Wright brothers' first flight, which was about 120 feet. Inside, the cabin is cavernous, some 220 feet long, and plenty wide, with tall, arched ceilings.

The inside of the fuselage resembled the inside of an unfinished building. It looks like thousands of miles of wires -- on the ceiling, on the floors and on the sides of the cabin, where the insulation was still exposed.

I heard someone say the wires were scary, showing you all that can possibly go wrong with an airplane. I nodded.

There were only a couple of dozen seats on the plane for the crew. A control panel that looked like a computer workstation sat in the middle of the plane, so adjustments could be made to various parts of the aircraft.

The test pilot, Jacques Rosay, who flew the first A380 ever flown in 2005, greeted us with a smile.

A surprisingly slight Frenchman with a twinkle in his eyes, Rosay said the flight from Cincinnati to SFO was "absolutely smooth."

"You fly the aircraft like you fly a little aircraft," he said humbly. "It's so easy to fly."

He called the flight cabin "the most silent cabin I've ever flown in."

Wine-barrel sized canisters sat on board in rows in some places to approximate the weight of about 500 passengers.

I wondered about a crash. How do you get out? Rosay said there are 16 evacuation doors. On a test run, in the dark of night, 500 passengers were evacuated in 78 seconds, he said.

I climbed a small, spiral staircase to get to the upper deck. It was located back were you might expect a posh bar.

But airlines that buy the plane will all configure it differently, Rosay said. Some may have three aisles, some two. Some will have more leg room for passengers and will feature wider seats. It seems so spacious.

Somebody gave the pilot a card and said: "I'm a musician, if you want a jazz quartet on your plane call me." He smiled.