World’s Largest Passenger Plane: Airbus A380 Completes Maiden Flight

The world’s largest passenger plane, the Airbus A380, has safely landed, having completed its maiden flight. The A380 airplane - designed to carry as many as 840 people between major airports - took off from its production site in southern France at just after 0830 GMT. The A380 took off from Toulouse, France, with a crew of six and about 20 tonnes of test equipment. The long-awaited test flight lasted about four hours, touring the Bay of Biscay, before returning to base.

The airlines take-off was also broadcast live on television and thousands watched via a giant screen in Toulouse’s main square. More than 50,000 people are thought to have watched the take-off, many of them sitting on the grass banks that line the runway. More than a year of flight-testing and certification-programme work will now follow before the A380 starts commercial services. Airbus, which is owned by European firm EADS and the UK’s BAE Systems, sees the A380 as the future of air travel. [Via BBC News]

This marks a new era of bigger larger frontiers in civil aviation.