It's been widely known that due to a couple of severe weather events, air travelers were recently left stranded on planes for eight hours at a time. I thought of this on Monday, March 19, as I waited eight hours to get ON a plane.

It wasn't just any plane, though. It was the Airbus A380, a double-decker giant with a 260-ft-wide wingspan and capable of carrying more than 500 people once it deploys for regular passenger service in 2009.

For years I have been hearing airport engineers talk about the impending arrival of this plane, what it will mean for terminal designs and runway modifications. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and a few other American hubs have spent millions to widen runway widths to 200 ft and alter gates so that the plane can park and emit passengers from two levels. Well, here it comes…sort of.

Airbus has spent about $6 billion designing and building the A380 and problems with the 310 miles worth of wiring per plane have caused the two-year delay in delivery to such customers as Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa, which operated the test run to JFK Monday. Fed-Ex and UPS cancelled their orders, and as such the cargo version of the A380 is pushed back to 2014. But Airbus officials, are in a marketing push to overcome the doubts about the A380's future. Rival Boeing opted to create a smaller, sleeker 787 Dreamliner model that is designed to burn 20% less fuel than its counterparts, and carry about half of the Airbus A380's 500+capacity.

At $300-million each, an A380 is much quieter than a 747 and is more fuel efficient at 80 miles per gallon, say officials. It even requires less runway length for takeoffs and landings. Runway lengths and the A380's maximum take-off weight of 569 tonnes are not of high concern for airport designers and operators. The issue currently being debated with the FAA is about whether the amount of time (typically 3 or 4 minutes) a plane behind the A380 needs to wait in order to take off can be reduced.

After an eight-hour wait interspersed with the obligatory half-hour press conference, I boarded the behemoth along with a newly made acquaintance, Gregory Sykes, who works at JFK and is an aspiring professional photographer. The slideshow photos are his. Indeed, a first-class or business class passenger will enjoy the spaciousness, the TVs, the pull-out conference tables, the minibar. Coach class passengers might notice a few extra inches of room. Lufthansa pilots said the plane handles like a Ferrari. It is meant for long-haul hub-to-hub flights, just the sort of stuff Lufthansa, Quantas, Singapore Airlines and other global airlines do.

What does this all have to do with airport architects, engineers and contractors? Well, whether it's an A380, Boeing 787 or the almost mythical coming of the VLJs — Very Light Jets carrying half a dozen rich passengers — airports must get ready for a changing mix of fleet landing, parking and taking off. Just as low-cost carriers shaped the past 10 years and affected airport designs and operations, so the A380, whether it succeeds per se or not, is a tangible symbol of changes to come.

March 29, 2007

Well they forgot to add a missing variable. The touted fuel economy of of the A380 is 80 miles per gallon per passenger. That is with the 500+ passenger limit. Remove the passengers and you get 6-7 gallons per mile. That is still decent compared to a single Abrams tank that gets 1.7 gallons per mile.

Brian Biggerstaff

March 29, 2007

Is that 80 passenger miles per gallon (.16mpg or 6.25 gal per mile for 500 passengers)?

Russ Cypher

March 24, 2007

Quieter than a 747 and is more fuel efficient at 80 miles per gallon.

Pat Winterberger