Airbus A380 at LAX
First visit to the US of the largest jetliner ever

Los Angeles, CA - March 19-20, '07

The first flight of an A380 to the US arrived on the morning of March 19th, 2007... and I was there. (Well, I work across the street, actually). Here are a few pictures. Sorry they're kinda dark; The weather did not cooperate.

This is actually the very first prototype A380, making this flight extra cool.

Interestingly, the "excuse" for the trip to the US was to train Qantas pilots. Qantas will be getting A380s soon, and I think the airline was responsible for some aspects of this flight. Don't forget that the flight here and then back to France must burn about 600 tons of jet fuel (about 160,000 gallons), so that was some very expensive training! Ah, and on the same day, a Lufthansa-operated A380 prototype flew from Germany to NYC, and to Chicago the day after. I don't know where it went from there, or if it returned to Europe on the same day as the A380 that came to LA.

In general I don't photograph airliners. They're extremely interesting from a technical point of view, but let's be honest, they're pretty boring-looking, just a tube with wings. Well, the 747 is kinda different, but that's it. Anyways, the A380 is quite different, with huge wings that droop down a little (you can tell if you look at it from the front or back), a big bulge in the belly between the wings, a "high forehead", and a weird oval-shaped body. Not to mention it's the largest airliner every made, with a wider wingspan than a C-5 Galaxy. So this was pretty cool. to see. In 10 years, after these guys have been in service for a while, I'll probably not think they're so exciting anymore, but right now they are historic record-holders, and an extremely rare sight.

Enjoy!

I went to see it take off but it left an hour before the schedued time, so I missed the departure =[

More pictures here. My friend Sagar got to see it from up close!

Bernardo