A big welcome to Britain for the Airbus A380, which touched down at Heathrow this afternoon, after a quick flypast of the various factories where bits of it were made.
I was watching this on Sky News, which we have projected onto one of our wallscreens at work, and realised it was just over a year ago that we were watching the first test flight live. This was much better. As the plane was taxied around the airport the cameras showed a full-frontal view of the plane. I had really only seen pictures of it from the side or from above or below. From the side it looks a little bit clumsy, but from the front… wow! The way those wings curve upwards is just beautiful.
Later I was looking at photos sent in to the BBC website and saw a picture of the A380 with the London Eye in the foreground. I only work round the corner from the London Eye… I could have gone outside the building and seen it fly over, if I had only thought about it. This deserves a Doh!
OK, so a plane that size is going to take almost as long to load with passengers as it will take to cross the Atlantic, but its worth it just for the shape of those wings.
I watched the sky footage too – I thought it was really disappointing. I’m not really a font of plane knowledge but I really like BIG things (in Liverpool there used to be a museum called the Large Objects Museum which is frankly the best kind of museum) so I was looking forward to the wow factor. But it just didn’t come accross on screen. They should have put it next to 747 and/or a Woolly Mammouth.
I’d listened to Fivelive’s coverage of the landing and I think they did it more justice- I’m going to have to find out what routes it starts flying on and go on a pointless holiday somewhere.
BBC radio news felt the need to balance the piece by saying:
Yeah, because they were always planning to land tan A380 at Coventry.