Extra- Ordinary A380

The Airbus A380 is a double-deck, four-engined airliner manufactured by EADS (Airbus S.A.S.). It is the largest passenger airliner in the world. It first flew on 27 April 2005 from Toulouse, France. After lengthy delays, commercial flights are scheduled to begin in late 2007. During much of its development phase, the aircraft was known as the Airbus A3XX. The nickname Superjumbo has become associated with the A380.

Oh well enough of the introduction of A380 (thanks www.wikipedia.org). All of you might be aware of the fact that Singapore Airlines will receive the first A380, and will be first to fly it commercially. All the other airlines will receive A380 only in late 2008.

On 13-08-07 some students of Temasek Polytechnic and some other volunteers were taken to a tour around Terminal 3 of Changi Airport. And then had the rare chance of boarding into Airbus A380, and got the T3 is so cool. It has many special features. One of them is the butterfly roofs. The roofs are arranged in a special manner which will allow natural light to come inside the terminal. The air condition system is set from the ground, as the roof is so high. And the best of all is the vertical garden which is 5 storeys high and can be seen from both arrival and departure halls.

After looking around Terminal 3, all the participants were taken to Terminal to Board into A380, which was parked there. Separate boarding passes were issued to all participants. All were given hand carry luggage to take onboard A380 to act as a real passenger. And food was provided to all the passengers and was encouraged by the in-flight supervisor to throw the remaining all over the aircraft. Basically these tests were conducted to measure the time needed to board all the passengers into A380, the time to disembark all the passengers, and the time to clean the whole aircraft.

If you want my personal comment on A380, as a passenger it just looks like any other aircraft. Nothing special about it. It just looks huge from the outside, and the cockpit might have some additional features, and the flight might have a longer flying time. But as an economy class passenger, there is nothing special in it comparing to any other modern day commercial aircraft.