The world's biggest passenger aircraft has completed its inaugural flight to the United States.
The double-decker four-engine Airbus A380 touched down at New York's John F Kennedy International Airport at yesterday to the cheers of onlookers.
Minutes later, a separate A380 arrived in Los Angeles, with just a crew and no passengers.
The first US flights are a chance for plane builder Airbus and German airline Lufthansa to show off the jewel of Airbus's offerings to potential American buyers and to the airports they hope to turn into flight bases for the jet, which costs €157 million.
The 239-foot-long jet can seat 555 passengers in a typical three-class configuration or 853 passengers in a one-class economy set-up. It can hold 81,890 gallons of fuel, cruise at 560mph and fly around 8,000 nautical miles.
But despite the plane's impressive statistics, Airbus has yet to sell any of the planes to US carriers.
Airbus has about 156 global orders from 14 airlines for the new plane, which has already made tests flights in Europe and to Asia.
Waiting in the wings, however, is Boeing, which now has competitors to the A380 in early production.