Visit Caps Weeklong Proving Run

Call it "Rock Star: Superjumbo." In what some have termed the most eagerly anticipated visit by a commercial airliner since the US debut of the Concorde SST nearly 40 years ago, the Airbus A380 returned to US shores Sunday night with a brief stopover at Washington Dulles International Airport.

"It's kind of like a rock star -- everybody wants to see it and have a piece of it," Airbus spokesman Clay McConnell told The Washington Times.

The 24-hour visit was the last stop in the weeklong promotional and testing tour, which began March 19 in New York and Los Angeles, and later Chicago. Throngs of planespotters, aircraft enthusiasts and curious bystanders turned out for each visit, even for the fairly late (2200 EDT) arrival Sunday night in DC. The plane was scheduled to leave for Germany Monday evening.

The official purpose of the A380's visits to the US was to test airport capacity and ground handling requirements for the massive airliner, in anticipation of the plane entering service by the end of this year. To that end, the Lufthansa A380 that visited JFK and Dulles even carried a full load of volunteer "passengers," most of whom work for Airbus or the German carrier, to test airport luggage handling requirements, and loading and deplaning operations.

"It’s not so much of a test; it is more of a verification," McConnell told The DC Examiner. "We want to do this in an environment at a real airport with real passengers. We expect it to be exciting yet uneventful."

Perhaps more importantly, however, the A380's flights to the US also served as validation -- not simply for the delay-prone A380 program, but also for Airbus itself.

As ANN reported, Airbus is now undergoing a drastic restructuring program, that includes the loss of 10,000 jobs at Airbus plants throughout Europe... due in large part to the financial hit the planemaker has taken due to the nearly two-year delay in getting A380s into customers' hands.

"This is the thing we've always looked forward to -- it's really doggone exciting to have this airplane come to town," McConnell said.

The A380 also flew a series of demonstration flights around each of the airports it visited, with airport officials, curious lawmakers, and airline representatives onboard. Airbus hopes that seeing the A380 in operation -- if only on a demo basis at the moment -- may convince US airlines such as Northwest and United to order the airliner.

The first A380 is due to be delivered to Singapore Airlines this fall.

FMI: www.airbus.com