paved with good intentions

As part of its continuing progress on overtaking Boeing at everything avionic-related, Airbus has now debuted the biggest commercial aircraft in the world, the A380 jumbo jet. Airport regulations agreed to worldwide call for no larger than a eighty-meter wingspan, and the A380 tips the scales at 79.8: it seems unlikely that Boeing's likely to retake the crown anytime soon.

The minimum capacity of the A380 is in the 500s, but is still more than the maximum capacity of the Boeing 747, long the standard in jumbo jets. Its maximum capacity, in the 800s, seems likely to challenge the way we consider airflight. With this increase of capacity, the airplane can accomodate a bar, lounge, and sitting rooms for first-class passengers, entertaining them in a style which has largely been lost to commercial airflight—or so Airbus says in its literature. In any event, the plane is a full double-decker, with six columns of seats on the upper and seven on the lower level (For comparison, the 747 has only four above). To fit these extra seats, the A380's profile is kiwi-shaped, while the 747's is more pear-shaped— the former being a more efficient design than the latter.

The LA Times also gushes at length about how global the reach of this new behemoth is, implicating workers from myriad nations and forcing infrastruction improvements in airports, the construction of new ships, and the building of new roads to admit the enormous components necessary for its fabrication.

To be honest, the Times article reads like a fluff piece, which is probably the case, since the A380 isn't to be debuted until later today, suggesting that Peter Pae's (of the Times) source is Airbus itself. Indeed, his piece seems to draw several figures from their press release, though he clearly has acccess to more information than is publicly available on their site. Still, the story is Column One, a higher honor than seems due Pae's regurgitation of pleasant pabulum. This does not recommend the credibility of the lofty assertions for the airplane's actual impact on the industry. (To be fair, Mr Pae is the author of many good articles, and he's generally a fair and balanced writer on the military and technology.)

By contrast, the New York Times' article Tuesday notes only that the plane came in 5 tonnes (5.5 tons, or 11,000 pounds) overweight and briefly adding that it will be debuted soon and that Airbus already has 149 orders for it. It allows that the five tonne overshoot is still less than one percent of its maximum weight. The article's about three paragraphs long.

The LA sibling of New York's paper of record ought to know better than to slap Mr Pae's puffery on the front page. Of course, we speak as on-the-record Boeing advocates in the ongoing War of the Duopoly, so take our views with a grain of salt as well. Then again, we—unlike the Times—are not claiming objectivity.

posted by citizen sunshine @ 10:21 PM