FRANCE: The world's largest passenger airliner, the Airbus A380, will be rolled out in France today. Lara Marlowe describes the plane that makes the Jumbo jet seem small.
There'll be an orchestra and dancing, a laser light show and oceans of champagne when the new double-decker Airbus 380, the largest passenger airliner ever built, rolls out of its presentation hangar in Toulouse today.
President Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero will all salute this feat of European genius, each in his own language, before 4,500 guests.
As the longest in office, Mr Chirac agreed to speak last. When you consider the diplomacy it must have taken to establish English as the working language for the project, not to mention the protocol for the unveiling, it's a miracle they ever built the thing at all.
Airbus is calling the inauguration a "reveal", which doesn't sound right in any language.
With a cost over-run of close to €1 billion, the A380 came to nearly €11 bn, the cost of the Channel Tunnel linking England and France. Airbus has already received 149 confirmed orders for the behemoth. Its claim that it will break even at 250 is disputed by aeronautics experts.
In its initial sales pitch, the European consortium concentrated on the huge amount of space inside the aircraft - enough for a gymnasium, living rooms, jacuzzis. So far, Virgin Atlantic is the only airline to have ordered such amenities.
"Inside, it's basically a two-storey loft, with staircases linking them," says Mr Charles Champion, the A380 programme director.
Interior designers can kit the aircraft out any way they want. The low-cost airlines, expected to be prominent clients, can cram up to 800 seats into an A380, though 550 passengers is the usual configuration.
The first commercial flights, by Singapore Airlines between London and Singapore, are scheduled for May or June next year.
Last month, Mr Chirac inaugurated the world's highest viaduct, at Millau in south-central France. It was designed by a British architect, but no matter. Four days ago, the European space probe Huygens reached its destination on Titan, 3.5 bn km from earth.
And now, today, the world's biggest airliner . . . the French are bursting with Gallic and European pride, and it's hard to tell where one ends and the other starts.
"The Old Continent still has the means to rival the United States in every area," the editorial in today's Le Monde says. "These achievements drive this home, at a time when the Union doubts in herself, in her geography and the direction she should take."
There will be no champagne at Boeing headquarters in Seattle. Airbus sold more aircraft than Boeing last year (320 to 285), for the second year in a row. "With Airbus beating Boeing, Europe is showing America," the French magazine Le Point crowed.
When Mr Noel Forgeard, the president of Airbus, presented the consortium's 2004 results last week, he boasted: "Our accounts show that Airbus is almost twice as profitable as its competitor."
Airbus puts out unflattering comparisons between the A380 and the Boeing 747, whose niche it is invading. For example, the A380 consumes 12 per cent less fuel, prompting its makers to call it "the green giant".
Referring to their dispute over subsidies (currently the subject of a three-month truce), the EU trade commissioner Mr Peter Mandelson spoke of "this battle of gladiators" between Airbus and Boeing.
Now EADS, the European defence consortium which owns 80 per cent of Airbus, has announced it is going after another Boeing preserve: the US military's need for in-flight refuelling tanker aircraft.
If it's any consolation to the Americans, setting aside the wings and fuselage, 50 per cent of the A380 comes from north America, and 60 per cent of its equipment is bought in dollars.
The A380 parts were so big they could not be carried on the Airbus transport plane, the Beluga. Instead, they were brought on barges up the Gironde river, or on lorries at night. Several roads had to be widened.
Airbus limited the aircraft's wingspan to 80 metres, to enable it to use most airports capable of handling the 747. Some airports are nonetheless investing millions of dollars in special equipment, like double-decker jetways to unload the freight version of the A380.
The Antonov 225 cargo aircraft, built in the Soviet Union in 1988, surpasses the A380's wingspan by 8.4 metres. And Howard Hughes's "Spruce Goose" - which only flew once - had a 97.5 metre wingspan.
The biggest crisis in the A380's development came last summer, when the German magazine Der Spiegel revealed that the prototype was 14 tonnes overweight.
Airbus dispatched "tiger teams" to factories in Britain, Germany, Spain and France to slim it down, for example by replacing steel in the tail with titanium. Engineers also developed a new material called "glare", which layers aluminium and fibre glass.
Despite all the fanfare today, the programme director, Mr Champion, says he won't get emotional until the A380's first test flight, at the end of March.
"It's not a plane until it flies," he explains.