TravelBlog: Part 3 - Airbus

"If it's not Boeing, I'm not going". That ditty was jammed into my head in the late 1980's by some young Boeing rep, during a 747 Assembly line tour that a good friend and I did. We worked for Canadian Airlines (RIP) and got ourselves to Seattle / Renton for a day's tour mostly because we could.

 These days "if it's not Boeing..." is not a rule I tend to follow much, though if pressed I'd probably offer that my preference (all things being equal) would be a Renton product, vs a Toulouse product..but that may be about to change. This trip sees me on two of Airbus's big airplanes, and I've flown neither previously. For airplane geeks out there, I'm getting on an A340-600 (world's longest airplane*) and an Airbus A380-800, (world's largest airplane). In fact, I routed myself just for these two planes as this way while it represented more flying, the elapsed trip time was shorter (take a moment, figure it out).

The asterisk above relates to more airplane geekery - Boeing has just launched a 747-800, of which there's one commercially, and it's sitting in Frankfurt, yet to fly its maiden flight as Lufthansa checks it out. Perhaps the Boeing guys left spare change hidden in the seats ? Anyway, I saw it today which was also kind of cool, and it will be the world's longest plance once it begins service, but as of today, that honour rests with the long airbus.

Just to be straight with you all, I'm not an anorak or anything (look it up), I just think big planes are interesting, and have since I was a little boy. Part of the fascination with this trip was the getting there part. While I have circled the globe before this, once on purpose on a weekend with nothing to do, there's always some quiet thrill in it for me.

The big thrill on the trip is the A380, and its in fact the reason for taking the long way.

The A380 represents the biggest of the big and size does seem to matter to these aircraft manufacturers. Besides the feeling of moving in a flying apartment building, the airplane also offers something others don't - a higher humidity setting. We all know the air is dry while inflight as typically humidity is set to 5%, because that's what the systems are capable of. The A380 can go as high as 25% humidity. So I'm interested to see if it feels different. Now, as heavier air weighs more, I imagine there's a penalty to fuel economy and that's also a factor I guess.

So, as the trip continues, I will go and try to stretch my legs a little. All this sitting is making me tired and there's still a long 'road' ahead. It is nice to have a connection to you all though, and for what its worth, some of you tagging along vicariously seem to have packed a little too much, my bag is rather heavy on my shoulders.