Flight of fancy?

Or folly?! The Airbus Consortium has spent a lot of money developing the A380, which has had some problems, most recently with the wiring...of which there are hundreds of miles worth per airframe.

Airbus A380 in test flight to North and South Poles
TOULOUSE, France - The Airbus A380 starts a global journey which will take in the North and South Poles on the last of a series of test flights before it applies for its air safety certificate.

The plane, which is being tested under commercial conditions, is seeking to gain its airworthiness certificate by mid-December from European and United States aviation safety authorities.

It will fly from Toulouse, France, where it is assembled, over the two poles and is set to stop in Johannesburg, Sydney and Vancouver in Canada before returning to France on November 30.

On Friday, the giant plane returned from 18 days of testing which took it to Asia, with stop-offs at major airports including Singapore, home of Singapore Airlines. This airline which should take delivery of the first A380 next October - deliveries are around two years behind schedule because of electrical cabling problems.

Airbus has claimed that the wiring problems besetting its A380 superjumbo have now been overcome and the firm is confident it can meet its new revised target dates, reported Gulf News. Airbus is hoping to receive air worthiness certification before the end of 2006. So far, 26 A380s have been built but these will need to be rewired following the earlier technical snags; firm orders presently stand at 166.

From the Airbus website:
"The A380 will carry more passengers over longer distances, allowing for projected passenger growth worldwide and helping to ease an increasingly congested environment. It will achieve this without increasing the number of air traffic movements and without negatively impacting the environment, thanks to significantly reduced noise and emissions levels."

This aircraft is supposed to be able to carry a maximum of 900 passengers or so in its most heavily-populated configuration, although a number of options are being touted of a more comfortable nature.

We'll have to wait and see how much interest there is in the concept, as it will require special accommodations to service it wherever it might go.

It weighs over a million pounds...