The world's biggest passenger aircraft, Airbus A380, completed its first voyage to the United States today carrying 483 brave, brave people. It landed without incident at Kennedy International Airport about 12:10 p.m, passing up its first chance to be the Hindenburg of the new millennium.
The nearly eight-hour trans-Atlantic flight was a chance for plane builder Airbus and German airline Lufthansa AG to show off the jewel of Airbus' offerings to potential American buyers and to the airports they hope to turn into flight bases for the jet. The 239-foot-long A380 can seat as many as 550 passengers, hold 81,890 gallons of fuel, cruise at 560 mph and fly some 8,000 nautical miles. Lufthansa Flight 8940 was meant to be a statement by Airbus that it can accommodate vast numbers of travelers comfortably and efficiently. A separate A380 arrived in Los Angeles, but it carried no passengers. [source] Rumor has it that at some point in time this thing will be able to hold like 850 people....that's like all of Rhode Island in one plane.
I'm not going to lie, I can wait to fly on this plane. It has wings the size of football fields. I'm actually really jealous that I wasn't one of the 483 chosen ones. I want to be a pilot when I grow up except I have reaaaaaaaaaally bad eyesight and a considerable problem with my attention span and relatively poor depth perception…and I'm already a grown up. All the computer programs in the world are not going to be able to prepare for the nightmare logistics of this boarding/deboarding hell. Oh, the humanity!
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