Gigante de los cielos A380 completo

Video from the channel a a about Airbus A380, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 2:15:08. Language: Spanish. Video type: Documentary.

A multi-part documentary series, gathered here into a single video, that follows the construction of the Airbus A380 from the Paris Air Show in June 2003 to its maiden flight in Toulouse on 27 April 2005. It alternates between the manufacture of the large components at plants in the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Spain, their transport to the final assembly line in Toulouse, assembly of the prototype, systems testing and the commercial effort to secure orders from airlines such as Qantas or Indian carriers.

The story places the project within the more than thirty-year rivalry between Airbus and Boeing: the goal was an aircraft with two full passenger decks that would surpass the 747. The earliest studies, from the late 1980s, tried to combine A340 and A320 fuselages, but were dropped due to evacuation times and lack of space on the upper deck; the result was an entirely new design, then known as the A3XX. Since the large components did not fit in the Beluga, a route was set up by sea to Pauillac, by barge along the Garonne and, for the final stretch, by road at night, passing through villages such as Lévignac with clearances of about 50 centimetres.

According to the documentary, the investment was between 8 billion and 10 billion euros, and around 250 sales would be needed for the programme to be profitable; by March 2005 there were 154 firm orders. The final assembly hall in Toulouse measures 500 by 250 metres, and the aircraft's fuselage is 73 metres long. The tests shown include the landing gear drop test at Goodrich's facilities near Toronto, the blade-off test of the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine in Hucknall, and the over-wing evacuation slide test, in which 40 people had to get down in under 17 seconds to meet the 90-second limit for the whole aircraft. The emergency gear deployment had problems that were eased with a Teflon coating. The aircraft was unveiled before about 5,000 guests and made its first flight with six crew members before about 50,000 spectators, in a flight lasting about four hours.