China Southern's 506-seat A380 cabin plan released

The configuration of China Southern's A380 has reportedly been leaked on Sina Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter. A seating diagram (below) shows the carrier will operate its A380 with 8 first class seats, 70 in business, and 428 in economy for a total of 506.

Of the eight carriers whose seating plans we know (see above chart), the average number of seats is 487, so China Southern's runs on the slightly more cramped side.

For details on the cabin, both first class and business class will be a in 1-2-1 configuration with first on the lower deck and business on the upper deck. Economy will primarily be located on the lower deck in a standard 3-4-3 configuration save for 9/10 rows (the last row only has the 4 middle block of seats) in the rear of the upper deck in a 2-4-2 configuration, like on Singapore Airlines.

China Southern's first A380 flew on 3 March from Toulouse to Hamburg. As of last year's Zhuhai airshow, the aircraft is due to enter service in the middle of this year.

For those of you who do not read Mandarin and are looking to translate the original mini-blog entry, my online translator of choice tells me the configuration is 8 "bold heads", 70 "prime", and 428 "economics".

There are also, reportedly, 19 lavatories as well as 14 galleys fitting 87 meal carts.