Concept in Definition ABC

East airplane commercial of the category of the superjumbos is currently the largest in the world. Its height is equivalent to a seventh floor and its interior accommodates 850 passengers. It was designed to compete with another great aircraft, the Boeing 747.

The history of the Aribus A380 began in 1988 in the French city of Toulouse

Toulouse is the center of the French and European aeronautical industry, a sector that has historically been dominated by large US companies.

Airbus is a consortium business formed by four manufacturers from France, Great Britain, Germany and Spain. Its journey began in the 1970s by manufacturing small and medium-sized aircraft (at that time the Boeing company manufactured two out of every three commercial aircraft, including the legendary 747).

When the draft of the new passenger plane there were many doubts about its viability economic and technical aspects related to safety (Originally, the project was known by the acronym A3XX).

For 8 years, the company's engineers faced the greatest challenge of civil aeronautics and to avoid industrial espionage those responsible for the project met in a semi-detached building abandoned

The main problem faced was the size of the aircraft, its weight and the deck structure (until then the passenger aircraft had a single deck within a round fuselage and the new model introduced a shaped fuselage ovoid). This and other technical innovations allowed the A380 to accommodate 25% more passengers than the Boeing 747 (this percentage represents 193 more seats than the competence).

Finally in 1996 the project for the new superjumbo was completed and in 2005 the Airbus A380 was officially presented.

Other data of interest

The Airbus A380 is not entirely manufactured in Toulouse, as its wings are manufactured in the Welsh town of Broughton and the tail in the Andalusian city of Cádiz. Despite the high technology used, the assembly of the rivets is done by hand.

Each aircraft incorporates more than 40,000 connectors and about 100,000 cables, each of its engines weighing 6 tons and each plane has more than 9000 square meters of surface (for its final finish you need half a ton of painting and the work of 90 painters).

While this aircraft offers all sorts of benefits, there is a downside: only a few international airports They have the landing strips with the necessary dimensions for the landing and take-off of this superjumbo.

Fotolia photos: Motive56 / Mechanik