Well, IT Flew

This morning the Airbus A380 superjumbo jet made its first flight. It'll bee the world's largest passenger airliner when it enters service mid-2006 with a capacity of up to 840 passengers. For the record, we pilots consider that a bad thing. Think about it, 840 people crammed in all economy class seating over the course of 12 or more hours across the Pacific is just a receipe for air rage and all sorts of other forms of trouble. As you may or may not know, I'm no fan of Airbus, but I do have to give them a little (very little) credit for actually getting it to fly. If you ask around, I think you'll find that most pilots (at least around here) have a similar attitude to the one I just expressed. Now, when Boeing's 787 Dreamliner makes its first flight in a couple of years, that'll be a very different story (its a medium sized, extremely efficient, and aestetically beautiful airplane).
Here's the MSNBC story on the flight:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7643311/
More pictures of the flight:
http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?front=yes&keywords=a380