The largest passenger aircraft in the world, the Airbus A380, touched down safely this afternoon after Europe's most eagerly awaited maiden flight since Concorde lifted its nose from the same French runway in 1969.
Thirty thousand enthusiasts from around Europe cheered as the massive double-decker airliner, designed to carry 555 passengers, but with room for more than 800, landed at Toulouse-Blagnac airport.
Charles Bremner, Times Paris Correspondent, was just 20 metres away as the aircraft took off from runway 32 L at 10.29am, a minute ahead of schedule. He described it as a "magical moment".
"Despite all the technology and the billions of pounds spent, the sight of the 420-tonne plane rumbling down the runway towards us was - I have to admit it as a pilot and flying nut - very moving indeed," Bremner reported.
Today's flight was a major milestone both for the aviation industry and for the European aircraft-maker’s battle with its American rival, Boeing, which is banking on demand for smaller aircraft to take tourists straight to their final destination rather than superjumbos ferrying passengers between major hub airports.
The aircraft was carrying just a six-man test crew, clad in orange flying suits, and about 20 tonnes of test instruments to measure every imaginable parameter. The flight stayed within a 100-mile radius of Toulouse.
"The speed on take-off was exactly as we had expected. The weather is wonderful," Jacques Rosay, the chief test pilot, said in a mid-air press conference about an hour after take-off. "Everything is absolutely perfect and we are very happy."
Noel Forgeard, the Airbus chief executive, was equally jubilant. "We told you the A380 would fly on this day at 10:30 and it flew right on time," he said.
The A380 is significantly wider, longer, higher and 118 tonnes heavier than the Boeing 747 and ends the jumbo's 35-year reign as the world's biggest passenger jet. It cost around £7 billion to develop, a third of it from European governments.
But it represents a substantial gamble for the European aircraft manufacturer as it tries to maintain its market lead over Boeing.
As Airbus and Boeing spar over what each calls unfair government subsidies for the other, the rival aircraft manufacturers have staked their success on competing visions of the future of commercial air travel.
The A380, with a catalogue price of $282 million (£148 million), represents a bet that international airlines will need bigger aircraft to transport passengers between ever-busier hub airports. But some analysts say signs of a boom in the market for smaller wide-body planes, such as Boeing’s long-range 787 "Dreamliner," show that Airbus was wrong to focus so much time and money on its superjumbo.
This week, Air Canada said that it had placed firm orders for 32 new Boeing jets, including 14 787s, with a list value of about £3.2 billion, and Air India announced plans to order 50 Boeing jets worth £3.6 billion. Air India wants 27 of the 787s, which will carry up to 257 passengers and have a list price of £63 million, boosting total orders and commitments for the plane to 237.
The 787, which was launched a year ago, is scheduled to enter service in 2008.
"If the A380 costs Airbus the mid-market then it’s the biggest mis-investment in aerospace history since Concorde," said Richard Aboulafia of the US consultancy Teal Group. "The way the market’s changing makes this look more like a science fair project every day."
Airbus, a unit of European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, is also planning to bring its own mid-sized jetliner, the A350, into service in 2010 - two years after the Boeing 787, but the US is demanding that no European aid be extended for the A350.
So far, Airbus has booked 154 orders for the A380, which it says will carry passengers 5 per cent farther than Boeing’s longest-range 747 jumbo at a per-passenger cost up to one-fifth below its rival’s. The firm says it needs to sell 250 to break even on its investment, although some analysts say the real figure could be double that.
The crew, dressed in orange suits, waved to the crowds after throwing open the door of the aircraft after today's maiden sortie. "A new page in aviation history has been written," said President Chirac said. "It is a magnificent result for European industrial co-operation."
The pilots checked the aircraft's basic handling characteristics while the on-board equipment recorded measurements for 150,000 separate parameters and beamed real-time data back to computers on the ground. The crew snapped souvenir photos in flight and after touching down.
They also took no chances on safety - donning parachutes for the first flight. A handrail inside the plane led from the cockpit to an escape door that could have been jettisoned had the pilots lost control.
In Paris, French Cabinet ministers broke into applause when President Jacques Chirac told them of the successful start to the flight. The head of Boeing’s French division, Yves Galland, said he had watched the televised takeoff and, just this once, "shared the emotion of the people of Airbus".
