The Airbus A380 landed in the U.S. for the first time this week when two of the jumbo jets touched down in New York and Los Angeles on Monday. Both New York’s Kennedy Airport and LA International are spending $300 million to widen runways and provide special docking equipment for the plane, which has a wingspan almost the length of a football field, according to a story on CNN.com. The double-decker plan has 555 passenger seats.
The largest commercial airplane had planned its initial test flight for last April. Design News Senior Editor Joseph Ogando last year covered how Airbus engineers decided which materials to use in building the world's largest commercial airliner.
Airbus originally planned to produce 25 A380s last year, but with teams of engineers in France and Germany working separately on the electrical design and not communicating the changes to each other on a timely basis, those production numbers were reduced to at the most nine A380s in 2006. See Design News Contributing Editor Doug Smock’s story on “Lessons Learned from the Airbus Design Team.”
For a look at the design programs used in development of the jumbo boeing, check out CAD/CAM Corner.
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