Supplying the World with the Latest A380 News
Thursday saw the roll out Air France’s sixth A380 (MSN064).
MSN064 took four months to complete Final Assembly with all major componets arriving in Toulouse by late March. First flight is currently scheduled for early September. Delivery to Air France will be in Q2 2011.
Today, Lufthansa’s fifth A380 (MSN061) will perform her first flight, after a months long stay on the Toulouse flightline.
Image Courtesy of Schiefi
Airbus has posted the dates and times for Convoy #14/2010. August 16th at 22:00 will be the time of departure, with an arrival into Toulouse on August 18th at 03:00.
On board the Convoy will the center fuselage for MSN059 (Korean Air #3) and a forward and rear fuselage for a yet unknown MSN.
All times are local.
Today, Lufthansa’s third A380 (MSN044) performed a RTO (Rejected Take Off) in preparation for it’s first cabin test flight, tomorrow.
Delivery of MSN044 is scheduled for early August.
Image Courtesy of Philippe Gallerand
Late last week, Airbus moved MSN002 (Prince Alwaleed) back into the flightline hangars and began preparations for refurbishment.
She will be completed and ready to fly by June 2011.
Image Courtesy of DigitalAirliners
Several aviation forums are reporting that Emirates will be suspending A380 deliveries in 2011. We cannot yet confirm or deny this, but current production schedules still state that the airline will receive three A380s in Q3/Q4 2011 (MSN060, MSN077 and MSN080).
If Emirates were to suspend deliveries this would halt the airline deploying the A380 on key routes such as Dubai to Melbourne and Dubai to Singapore.
Over in Toulouse, Singapore Airlines twelfth A380 (MSN058) has successfully performed her first flight. This also happened to be her ferry flight to Hamburg for cabin outfitting.
Image Courtesy of Schiefi
Air France’s fourth A380 (MSN049) has begun Cabin Flight Testing in Hamburg.
Tests flights will continue over the coming weeks, with delivery of the frame in late August.
Image Courtesy of Gruß Marvin
Last Friday marked the first time that Airbus delivered two separate A380s on the same day. The A380s in question were MSN041 (Lufthansa #2) and MSN051 (Singapore Airlines #11).
With these deliveries, the total number of A380s in airlines service is 33 (11 each for Emirates and Singapore Airlines, 6 for Qantas, 3 for Air France and 2 for Lufthansa)
Just a quick update to finish the week off:
Qantas’s ninth A380 (MSN055) finally made it’s first flight yesterday, after a long seven week wait on the flightline.
MSN055 is now in Hamburg and will soon be towed to an outfitting hangar.
Image Courtesy of matze-man
We mentioned in our previous post that Qantas’s ninth A380 (MSN055) was scheduled to make it’s first flight on July 12th. Just after we posted this Airbus changed the schedule saying first flight had been delayed until July 14.
Here is MSN055 performing a taxi run late yesterday evening.
Airbus have announced that Lufthansa’s second A380 (MSN041) will be delivered on July 16.
Image Courtesy of Yvan Panas
