A flying palace, tall as a seven-storey building and half a football field long, today raised the bar for deluxe aviation and ended the Boeing 747’s 37-year reign as the planet’s biggest airliner.
The Rs 1,267-crore Airbus A380 completed its maiden commercial flight this afternoon, carrying 455 passengers from Singapore to Sydney on a trip more about caviar than commuting.
Some of the passengers were ensconced in luxury suites and double beds designed by French fashion house Givenchy, eating marinated lobsters and sauteed foie gras off fine bone china and washing them down with Dom Perignon Rose served in crystal glasses.
“I have never been in anything like this in the air before,” said Australian Tony Elwood, reclining with wife Julie on the double bed in their first-class Singapore Airlines (SIA) suite for which he had paid $50,000 (Rs 19.8 lakh).
The airline held an online charity auction to drum up publicity for the flight, SQ380, and people paid between Rs 22,175 and Rs 40.65 lakh for their seats, raising Rs 4.99 crore for three social service bodies.
On a normal day, the fare on the route on the A380 would be Rs 32,550 (economy class), Rs 1.44 lakh (business class) and Rs 1.95 lakh (first-class suite), an airline official said.
The passengers were from 35 countries, 11 of them Indians. The youngest was a ten-month-old boy from Singapore and the oldest a 91-year-old Californian who had been on the world’s first Boeing 747 commercial flight between New York and London in 1970.
Briton Julian Hayward, a dotcom billionaire who made the highest bid of $100,380 for two suites, was the first on board as passengers turned a long-haul flight into an airborne party.
Some were still standing when the giant double-decker sped down the Changi airport runway and took off into aviation history at 8am (5.30am Indian time), drawing huge applause from nearly everyone aboard.
Passengers lined up to get autographs from chief pilot Robert Ting, who came out of the cockpit. “Flying this aircraft is like flying any other big jet,” said Ting, one of four pilots and a crew of 30 on board.
Some 70 media personnel, including TV crews, jammed the aisles trying to interview passengers. Flight attendants squeezed past, smiling and posing for photographers.
Despite the gourmet food and the historic occasion, what seemed to impress most was how quiet the airliner is. Just over seven hours later, the plane emerged from low-lying cloud to fly over Sydney’s famous harbour before touching down on time, a contrast to two years of delays that pushed its European manufacturer Airbus SAS into a loss. A jazz trio welcomed the flying luxury yacht to Sydney.
26/10/07 Agencies & Sanjay Mandal/The Telegraph
