Forget legroom. The next generation of the Boeing 747 A380 – the world’s largest passenger aircraft – will have a whole bedroom. People can barely wait to fly the most mind-boggling aircraft ever assembled, says Pete Pae

To build the world’s biggest passenger plane, Airbus first constructed the world’s largest wing and fuselage factories. It set up a paint shop big enough to house a football stadium, bought the world’s biggest automated riveting machine and commissioned a 505-foot-long transport ship.

Recently at Airbus headquarters, the public got its first look at what many consider an engineering marvel: the A380, the heaviest and costliest commercial passenger aircraft ever built. In a lavish ceremony, a 10-storey-high curtain parted to reveal the first completed “super-jumbo” plane before some 5,000 guests, including dignitaries from other countries.

The A380 has the capacity to carry as many as 800 passengers – more than double the capacity of a Boeing 747 – on two decks. The craft will weigh more than 1.2 million pounds when fully loaded. It stretches about 260 feet wingtip to wingtip, and the tail stands seven storeys high. The A380’s passenger cabin is so elevated that 18 doors are equipped with emergency slides made with special friction material to slow down escaping passengers. Final work on the aircraft was done in a hangar 1,610 feet long, and workers had to take elevators to reach their spots in the assembly line along a five-storey-high scaffolding.

“Everything about this plane is mind-boggling,” says Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst for research firm Teal Group.

For 35 years, Boeing Company’s 747 set the standard for jumbo commercial aircraft. European governments got into the airplane business in 1970 by teaming up to finance Airbus, which is now controlled by a Dutch aerospace company. Airbus thinks its plane will create the blueprint for the next generation of airborne giants.

“It’s the plane of the future, a cruise ship in the sky,” says John Leahy, Airbus’ top salesman, who is credited with helping the company surpass Boeing as the world’s biggest-selling aircraft maker. The A380 “will change the way we fly, just like what the 747 did”.

Eleven airlines, including Singapore, Korean Air, Lufthansa and Air France, plus cargo carriers FedEx and UPS, have ordered 149 planes at $250 million apiece. After a year of test flights, the first passenger-carrying A380 is expected to fly in spring 2006, with Los Angeles International Airport a likely destination.

In keeping with the grand scope of the A380, to get the plane built involves a global mobilisation of supplies that is unequalled for an industrial project. Some 18,000 suppliers in 30 countries, including the USA, have a hand in its construction. Thousands of A380 parts crisscross the globe daily en route to factories in Europe. Plants in Britain assemble the wings, workers in Germany build the fuselage, and these major sections are then shipped to Toulouse for final assembly.

The man responsible for this $12-billion project, including the delivery of a jigsaw puzzle of parts, is Frenchman Charles Champion, 49, executive vice- president for the A380. Champion, a Stanford University graduate, has no doubt that despite its size, the A380 will fly “beautifully”. The plane relies more on composites, such as carbon fiber, than does the 747, to save weight while adding significantly more space.

The wind beneath the wings

Broughton is home to the world’s largest wing assembly plant, with enough room to fit 12 soccer fields. (The rough cut wings for the A380 are shipped here from Iowa, USA. See side bar on the next page).

Lennie Cimeli, head of A380 wing skin manufacturing, climbed up on one of the pieces. “This is my baby,” he says, pointing at what appeared to be a shiny aluminium floor. A 29-year Airbus veteran, Cimeli has been involved in virtually every new aircraft built by the company. But the A380 will be special, he says. “I would love to see this big baby fly.”

Aluminium plates (from the US) arrive at the Broughton factory in the basic shape of a wing. The pieces are too big to stand up, so they are laid on the plant floor. Then a milling machine on rails moves back and forth over them to shave off most of the aluminium, turning a 6-ton plate into a shiny 1-ton sheet.

The wing skins are treated in a chemical bath. Then a three-storey-high automated robotic riveting machine, the first of its kind, attaches the skins to a row of ribs made of composites and metals. The machine uses more than 750,000 fasteners to attach the skins; difficult-to-reach spots are done by hand.

Afterwards, workers install the wing innards, including electrical wiring, hydraulic and fuel systems and an air pump the size of a compact car. The wing is so thick that the Houston Rockets’ 7-foot-6 basketball centre Yao Ming could stand comfortably inside its broadest point.

To move each 120-foot-long wing piece to Toulouse, along with fuselage pieces from Germany, Airbus had to create a shipping system.

A 96-wheel trailer carries the wing piece a mile down the road, where it is loaded onto a custom-built river craft. The craft carries one wing piece and travels 16 miles downriver to the port at Mostyn. “We have to catch a good tide here” to clear the low bridges, says Ken Roberts, an Airbus manager in charge of transporting the wing. “It can be challenging sometimes.”

At the port, the parts are moved onto a Chinese-built cargo ship to be transported to France. The cargo ship, a derivative of a car carrier built for Airbus, is marked with large letters saying “A380 On-board”.

After the parts are unloaded at a port north of Bordeaux, they go on a barge that makes its way 60 miles up the Garonne River.

The barge must pass under the historic stone Pont de Pierre, a bridge near Bordeaux. The barge has a window of only about three hours a day when the tide will allow it to clear the bridge without damaging it or the wings.

At one point, the company had contemplated building massive, zeppelin-like airships to fly the biggest pieces to Toulouse. But that would have risked bad weather, the possibility of dropping the cargo and other uncertainties.

At the small river port village of Langon, the wings and fuselage are separately loaded onto tractor-trailers, which make the final leg of the journey through 150 miles of French countryside, mostly two-lane roads lined with vineyards and geese farms, to landlocked Toulouse.

The convoy – three tractor-trailers carrying two wing sections and a fuselage – makes the trek overnight, when the French police close down intersecting roads.

At the moment, Airbus has heard little criticism from the villages, where residents have been lining the roads with their lawn chairs to marvel at the twice-a-month night-time convoy travelling barely 10 miles an hour.

If the airplane is a success, residents may get less sleep. When Airbus ramps up to full production, the parade of giant airplane parts coming through the towns would become a weekly affair.

Sourcing materials from all over the world

Executive vice-president for the A380 Charles Champion’s major worry that keeps him up at night are the logistics of “getting the supplies here on time”. A single A380, for instance, requires 1 million aluminium fasteners.

Any kink in the intricate global delivery chain could delay the A380, and that could be financially deva