 |
Flying
A-380 aircraft
See the A-380 for yourself - and enjoy a bottle of Buzet while you're there
 Throughout this summer, visitors to south-west France can expect to see the world's largest passenger aircraft, the A-380, on a series of test flights overhead. Eventually five prototypes will be in the air, their crews evaluating millions of components. The A-380 will be easy to identify: it is longer and much taller than a Jumbo, and capable of taking 555 passengers on a single flight. Although it weighs 928,000lbs, the heaviest of any civil airliner to date, the A-380 is capable of non-stop flights from Europe to Australia. It goes into service in the second half of 2006 when Singapore Airlines will take delivery of the first aircraft off the assembly line.
The A-380 is another fine example of Anglo-French co-operation in engineering and technology, which began of course with the Concorde, a brilliant collaborative effort, whatever its commercial shortcomings. The A-380 has much better prospects of making a profit, and includes many vital British components, notably its four Rolls Royce Trent 900 engines, and its wings, built at Chester.
However, the local French population is understandably proud to be associated with another technological masterpiece, particularly as the manufacturers, Airbus France, have chosen a local wine to celebrate the recent first flight of the A-380, when prototype F-WWOW took off from Blagnac International Airport at Toulouse and spent almost four hours in the air.
 Airbus France are commemorating the event by launching, with the support of local winegrowers, a special edition of Buzet, called '205 premier vol A380'. Buzet is a wine from the Haute-Garonne and similar to Bordeaux but, say those who have tried it, not only extremely good but also reasonably priced. The local co-operative, Les Vignerons Reunis de Buzet, makes all but a very small proportion of the appellation, and this is the place to buy a case, though you can order it by the bottle in most local restaurants.
The A-380 cuvee speciale is a 1999 vintage, and likely to become something of a collectors' item, attracting a premium. More than twenty-five years ago, when Concorde was first launched, a similar celebratory wine of splendid vintage Bordeaux was opened and drunk by most of the people who acquired a bottle, making the few surviving examples worth a great deal of money
Article from our May 2005 E-Newsletter
|
|
|
|
