A-380 may land ahead of schedule

New Delhi: India will see the world’s biggest commercial airliner, the A-380, in regular operation much earlier than expected. Kingfisher, the only Indian carrier to have ordered this aircraft, was supposed to start getting deliveries from late 2011. However, the airline’s CEO Vijay Mallya told TOI that he has "requested Airbus to advance the delivery of two planes to 2009", something which is most likely to happen.
Hoping to get government clearances to fly abroad much before then, the airline plans to mount these planes on the Bangalore-San Francisco and Mumbai/Delhi-New York routes with a possible stop-over in Europe.
Delhi will get an A-380-compliant code F runway next year. New airports in Bangalore and Hyderabad are also going to be ready next year that can easily accommodate this plane.
The airline had placed a firm order of five A-380s, each of which has a list price of Rs 1,200 crore, with an option of five more at the Paris air show in 2005.
The only other airline that's currently considering this plane is AI.
12/07/07 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India

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Categories: Kingfisher Jul 2007, New Jul 2007