March 2006 Archives

Ever wondered what it's like to fly a multi-million pound fighter very low and very, very fast? I had too, until I got the opportunity to fly in - and take control of - a Royal Air Force Harrier T10 trainer yesterday.

My invitation required me to travel to RAF Wittering in Lincolnshire; home to the RAF's 20 Sqn operational conversion unit, which prepares students to fly British Aerospace-built Harrier GR7/7A ground-attack aircraft assigned to the UK's Joint Force Harrier (JFH). And as if the weight of honing the capabilities of the next generation of RAF and Royal Navy combat pilots isn't great enough, its instructors also from time to time get to fly with less experienced aviators, such as sporting celebrities, TV presenters and journalists.

After suffering a few minutes of utter dejection when my aircraft - ZH659 - experienced a technical problem just prior to walking out to the jet on Wednesday afternoon, I returned to Wittering the following morning to achieve a life's ambition. As I expected, this was to be a very different experience to my previous flights in a two-seat RAF aircraft - the de Havilland DHC-1 Chipmunk.

Squadron pilots had told me that the Harrier's acceleration was spectacular, but our take-off run of around 300m (1,000ft) followed by a steep climb - simulating a departure from a forest clearing - was made all the more remarkable by the late appearance of a rabbit on the runway. Thankfully this was no brave bunny, and with no harm done we departed the Wittering circuit for a spell of low-level flight. I had requested that my pilot - an RN Lt Cdr who requests that I identify him only by his nickname: Tinsel - let me have a stint at the controls during our sortie, but I hadn't expected him to show such confidence in my abilities so early. My first chance to fly a Harrier, and I was at 250ft doing 450kt (520 mph)! Thankfully, the need to concentrate all my energy on the altitude and speed readings displayed on the aircraft's head-up display to keep us straight and level meant there was no time to feel nervous at the risk of something going wrong.

Having survived my first test, Tinsel took the controls to show me what the T10 can really do. Even with its Rolls-Royce Pegasus 105 engine (the GR7A uses the more powerful 107), the aircraft has a breathtaking turn of speed, while the nozzles which allow it to hover on its own thrust also enable it to perform some unique manoeuvres, such as a push-over - a kind of loop which sees the aircraft inverted but traveling at an airspeed of only 60-70kt. High g manoeuvres (well, around 4g is high in my book!) were also demonstrated, including during a simulated attack on a disused RAF airfield. I then had a second go at flying the aircraft at around 400ft, again without incident.

Several touch-and-go circuits followed at Wittering to demonstrate the various configurations available to a Harrier pilot - including a rolling vertical landing with a forward speed of around 50kt. We then came in for a final hover, during which I took the throttle and stick controls for a couple of seconds, before Tinsel performed the Harrier's signature air show trick - a braking stop bow - before landing.

I drove back to the office feeling honoured to have had the opportunity to get airborne in a Harrier, and look forward to drinking from the squadron "hover pot" (a two-pint yard-arm) next time I'm at Wittering and can get a taxi back to my hotel!

There's a joke that goes something like: "If there's a bar full of pilots, how can you tell which one flies a Harrier? He'll tell you". Apologies to all who know me, but now I know why they go on about it so much.

It's 132 years since the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky wrote his famous orchestral work "Pictures at an Exhbition" (a simple version of which you can listen to here - isn't that neat) and he had very different images in mind from the ones that we've just put on display in Moscow.

The photographs that we are exhibiting with our partners Domodedovo International Airport might better inspire a composer such as Sir William Walton who composed my favourite theme in the movie Battle of Britain.

What we've done is take about 30 Flight International covers dating back to 1909 and put them on display in the elegant surroundings of the international departures hall at Domodedovo. The work was commissioned by East Line Group-owned Domodedovo and I was enormously privileged to travel to Moscow to open it with the airport's deputy director general Alexei Raevsky.

My good friends in Domodedovo's PR department - director Anna Krasnova and manager Vladimir Gushchin - did a wonderful job of putting the whole thing together and it looks superb. I arrived to find that they had created a very nice catalogue, hired musicians, and rustled up a 30-strong audience from Moscow's aviation, travel and media community for a champagne opening. Not a bad way to spend a Tuesday morning.

Should you happen to travel through Domodedovo in the next two months then I very much hope you'll take a look at it. And we're looking at possibilities for relocating it afterwards.

Here are some pictures of the exhibition and ceremony.

A Boeing 737 sneaks into the display

Anna Krasnova and Alexei Raevsky of Domodedovo International Airport

Tatyana Khoreshok of the Moscow office of VisitBritain

Yours truly and Alexei Raesky open the event

Neil Cooper, Russia Director, Russo-British Chamber of Commerce

Thanks to everyone who read, and better still commented, on my earlier account of experiencing the A380 evacuation up close and personal. As promised, there will be a more detailed story in next week's Flight International which will of course appear on www.flightglobal.com as usual.

Among other things, it will describe just how I personally got out of the aircraft - and perhaps spark an interesting debate about game theory and actions that are good for an individual not necessarily being good for a group. You'll see what I mean.

But I did immediately want to clear up one loose end that I left hanging in my first post and which I've since been able to discuss with Airbus. That is the mysterious question of what happened to evacuee number 737.

You may recall that I mentioned previously that this was a woman who was escorted off the aircraft a short while before the evacuation - this was important because it appeared to leave only 852 on board and not 853 as planned. Other passengers said she looked ill and we assumed that was why she'd gone.

Well, I am assured that in fact the poor lady needed the bathroom and furthermore that, categorically, she did get back on. Fact is that I didn't see her return, but it is quite true that there were a lot of comings and goings by various programme staff and I'm happy to accept that I just missed it. Hey, I had a lot on my mind!

 

As a journalist of blond persuasion, few site visits can offer the poetic beauty of gaining a story byline from a place called Moron.

Yes, such a place exists, and is in fact the home location for Spain's next-generation strike aircraft, the Eurofighter Typhoon. This is clearly no laughing matter, but nonetheless a key moment of a recent Eurofighter consortium-sponsored press tour to the base - which is located a short coach ride away from the southern Spanish city of Seville - was a photo stop beneath a traditional tile sign outside its splendid officers' mess. As the picture below shows, my confirmation as a moron is not only photographic; it is "oficiales" (accompanying me, in the red tie, is Damian Kemp from Jane's).

Spain's air force might be buying the smallest number of Typhoons among the four Eurofighter launch nations, but it undeniably has the best base name - although Germany deserves special praise for placing its first Eurofighters at the invitingly named Laage airbase near Rostock. On the evidence of my recent visit, Moron can also lay claim to providing the best lunch, comprising a mix of tapas and ice-cold cerveza followed by delicious paella and fine local wine.

So it's many thanks to all on the Spanish air force's 113 Sqn for looking after us so well and for providing a fascinating insight into their operations of the Eurofighter. And while we English speakers were busy chuckling about Moron signs, we learned that our talk of having our "pictures" taken made you smile too. Language is a funny thing, but that's a new piece of Spanish anatomical slang (of the male type) to add to my vocabulary. Gracias!

As it happens, I've just followed my colleague Helen to Domodedovo myself  - mainly to open an exhibition of Flight International magazine covers at Domodedovo airport, which I'll blog separately, but I think Moscow deserves its own despatch.
I'm blogging this on the flight home after a three day refresher lesson in capitalism in the raw, and feeling better for it.
I love places like this where you can directly observe trade in action, see business cases work or not, and watch some individuals succeed for often subtle reasons and others fail. That is much harder to do in mature Western economies which can be impenetrably complex and where the true reasons for success and failure are not always obvious.
(For the same reason I like the airport at Istanbul where I saw a whole terminal level covered with pallets of portable goods watched over by lone traders of unguessable nationality in black leather jackets, and wearing expressions that suggest they've trodden a a rougher path through life than I have. I wouldn't fancy my chances haggling with them.)
Moscow is rather more sophisticated, but the rules of the aviation sector are not so different from those governing the Istanbul entrepreneurs. The one big difference is the interfering hand of the Russian state of course.
I flew Lufthansa into Sheremetyevo - Moscow's oldest, biggest and least pleasant airport. Exactly why Lufthansa, which has perhaps the widest aspirations of any Western carrier in Russia, uses it I don't know. But Shermetyevo-based Aeroflot, which is still very much the 65 tonne gorilla of the sector with its wide domestic network, can and does make life very difficult for airlines that talk about switching to Domodedovo.
There are finally stirrings of change at Sheremetyevo - they've grudgingly put in some lighting so it's not quite so depressing (but still miserable), and a railway link is planned, which will be a blow to the legions of piratical taxi drivers who are allowed to aggressively hassle arriving passengers until they manage to get out of the terminal. (Yes, like JFK, but very much worse.) The immigration line for both Russians and foreigners is a one-hour disaster area which makes the worst of Washington or London look positively attractive.

I flew out on Transaero from Domodedovo, which is about as different as can be imagined. Functional, light, airy, already with a rail link, and generally the very model of a modern airport. No surprise to find Emirates choosing Domedovo or to see a gaggle of 'Singapore girls' leaving the frozen airport in their renowned SIA frocks, but wrapped in rather less-marketable SIA greatcoats.
Both airports still play host to an exotic and colourful collection of Soviet-era aircraft in various states of repair and disrepair (a couple of which Helen photographed), and leased and occasionally new Boeings. Airbus is pretty much restricted to the new Aeroflot fleet - otherwise this is the land of the leased 737.
Taxying around Domodedovo provides a wonderful view of this eclectic display. Despite long-standing predictions to the contrary, Russia still has some 230 airlines and counting (unclear whether upwards or downwards), ranging from Aeroflot down to one- or two-aircraft fleets from all over this vast land.
How they all stay in business in their ultra-niche markets remains unexplained, but no doubt partly lies in the lurid stories of what often happens if you try to set up in competition to them - that first involves overcoming a mysterious series of local government-inspired obstacles which, if you don't take the hint, are followed by some alarmingly personal attentions from representatives of the incumbents themselves.
It's anybody's guess who designed some of the liveries, but they certainly had fun. No-one more so than the folks who came up with the eyeball-searing green of Sibir/S7 Airlines which I have only ever seen elsewhere on my 11 year-old son's bedroom walls - and even he eventually thought better of it. Leaving that room left you with a slight orange afterglow to your vision for an hour or so, but in the grey-white Russian winter, the same green with red trim works superbly.
We pass numerous examples of the ubiquitous Il-76 freighter, now largely banned in Europe on noise grounds, a few Tu-134s including one pretty snappy-looking one with a huge KD on the side that I rather fancy for myself, plus Tu-154s, a surprising number of Il-62s, plenty of Il-86s and the odd Tu-204.
There is also a cornucopia of registration prefixes - Russia, Ireland and assorted Caribbean tax-havens are of course well-represented, but Libya's 5A- is in evidence and somewhere that owns 4K- also has a presence. (I used to know that sort of stuff - please leave a comment if you still do!)

 

East Line, the operator of Moscow's Domodedovo airport, is not shy about its ambitious growth plans. The company says Domodedovo is already viewed as a hub by international carriers, and has the widest domestic route network of any Russian airport. With nearly 14 million passengers last year, the expansion work at the airport's current terminal that is set to be completed by the end of this year, leaving it able to process as many as 17 million, comes not a moment too soon.

Its terminal building is a gleaming example of modern architecture (albeit partially shrouded in scaffolding as the expansion forges ahead). And our East Line hosts for the three days I spent there with three other UK-based journalists, proudly showed off some of the airport's most important selling points.

For airlines considering a switch from Moscow's ageing Sheremetyevo airport, security is likely to be a prime concern. "Security is growing in importance almost daily for Russian airports," an East Line representative told us, and the airport is squaring up to this with the introduction of biometric systems, a full-body scanner for late-arriving passengers (and dodgy-looking characters) and banks of extra check-in desks.

For passengers, the fully-equipped, free nursery and plush airline lounges - one of which includes a grand piano and is more reminiscent of a swanky hotel bar - as well as a film rental service, where early birds can settle down to watch a DVD in an individual booth while waiting for their flight, are likely to be a bigger draw.

But Domodedovo can't afford to ignore the wider issues affecting Russian aviation, and it is outside the airport, in the highly fragmented Russian aviation industry (there are around 185 airlines, and only 35 million passengers), that the real challenges emerge: one of the issues that came up time and again during our three-day visit was clearly visible outside the terminal building: the ageing, and predominantly Russian-manufactured fleet. One executive we met declared "if you want to go bankrupt, continue using Russian aircraft and you're there." And Russian airline Sibir's representative told us that, of a fleet of approximately 5,500 aircraft, 54% are currently grounded.

In a market where passengers are extremely sensitive to ticket price rises, upgrading to a more modern, Western-manufactured fleet while maintaining profitability is no mean feat. But it is doubly important because rocketing fuel prices cannot be hedged against. The 40% import tax on Western manufactured aircraft that Russian airlines are forced to pay can't help either.

Away from shiny new Domodedovo, airport infrastructure is a big issue too - only 59 out of Russia's 383 airports have a modern landing strip, according to the representative of Sibir we spoke to. 

Complicated politics are another barrier to growth: airlines seeking new routes from Domodedovo to smaller regional airports often face obstruction from local airports linked to their local airlines, and keen to protect their interests. Larger airlines of the kind that Domodedovo must be keen to attract are forced to plan their route expansions around the destinations that agree to let in the competition by being certified for Western aircraft.

Still, despite many challenges ahead, East Line is confident that "Domodedovo is the most progressively developing airport in Russia." And although the airport's business development director Daniel Burkard admits that it is extremely unlikely that all of the land surrounding the airport that has been earmarked for as many as eight (yes eight!) more runways will be used, plans for a third runway by 2015 (the airport is the only one in Russia currently to operate two runways consecutively) are already in place.

 

There's a touch of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory about Grob Aerospace, which I visited yesterday. You get the feeling that the owners and managers of this Bavarian company - which made its name manufacturing all-composite military training gliders in the 1970s and is now transferring that expertise to an ambitious business and utility jet - do what they do because they love building things that fly. And that's refreshing in today's beancounter-run, quarterly performance-obsessed aviation industry.

"We won't build toilet seats for Airbus or Boeing," jokes chief operating officer Andreas Strohmayer, explaining why this vertically-integrated business has turned down countless offers of subcontracted work using its expertise in carbon-fibre structures. Instead, Grob, a small offshoot of the family-owned industrial machinery company of the same name, takes the attitude that, unless there is a very good reason for outsourcing any part of its production process, it will do it itself.

The aerospace company's eighty-year-old founder, Burkhart Grob, is still very much involved in the company, and, because of the success of the family's main business, can afford to run Grob without having to squeeze out a profit every year. That is not to say Grob is not a well-run and highly-successful manufacturer. It has spent decades finessing its skills in carbon-fibre manufacturing from making gliders to the company's latest product, the SPn, the only all-composite business jet on the market and its new flagship.

If you remember the book, one of the most fascinating things about Wonka's - other than its owner's enthusiasm for his products - was that nobody had ever seen inside the factory. Grob managed to keep the SPn project secret from everyone other than a few select suppliers right up until it unveiled the aircraft at last year's Paris show. "There's only cows around here," remarks sales and marketing director Hans Doll of the factory and airfield's remote location on the outskirts of a farming village, one hour's drive from Munich. "And they don't talk."

One of the greatest pleasures of seeing round the factory was being invited to give a mighty kick to the SPn. Being carbonfibre, rather than leaving a size-ten indent, your boot bounces back.

I'll be writing more about Grob in the 25 April issue of Flight International, our business aviation special.

It should become apparent over the course of this year that the NASA bidding process for the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), part of the agency's new Exploration Transportation System (ETS), is about managing change and not about jumping through the hoops of a real procurement process.

NASA has not even selected a contractor for the CEV yet and already it's stated that the CEV's Launch Vehicle's (CLV) upper stage is to be made at its Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) near New Orleans - where Lockheed Martin builds Space Shuttle external tanks (ET). MAF is also designated as the assembly centre for the Earth Departure Stage, which will take humans to the Moon from 2018. And the booster it's to fly on, the Cargo Launch Vehicle (CaLV) is nowhere near even its first preliminary design review yet.

There is one big reality that is going to ensure that the contractors for ETS, and what they do for that new transportation system, will look surprisingly like the current industrial set up for the Space Transportation System, commonly known as the Space Shuttle; and that reality is the workers.

They have pensions and employment contracts with Boeing and Lockheed and the many other sub-contractors.

To take a simple example, let's say NASA decides to put the contract for ET manufacturing up for grabs again and Boeing bids for it and wins.

Does anyone think that Lockheed can just sack its workforce and that Boeing will have its own ET people to walk in there and take over? Or does anyone think that it would be easy to transfer the 2,000 Lockheed employees at MAF to Boeing?

These are not production line workers. These are highly skilled engineers whose knowledge and experience cannot be easily replicated.

So key is personal knowledge in the space industry that the Aerospace Industries of America trade association has called for the re-employment of Apollo programme engineers - most of whom are now in their sixties and seventies - because CEV looks like an Apollo capsule.

Now think of the entire STS, from propellant, to mobile platform repair, to orbiter avionics, magnify the exchange of people, the legal, financial enormity of that transition.

Yet in the world of NASA contracting we are expected to believe that operating a multi billion dollar manned space programme can easily exchange one contractor for another. That if Boeing can't provide a vehicle, then Lockheed or Northrop Grumman can.

The reality of the US human spaceflight system is that Shuttle has lasted 30 years and has a huge infrastructure supporting it, from workers, to the offices and test centres and labs that house them, both NASA and contractor owned.

ETS must use similar infrastructure, after all, much of it, we're told, will be shuttle derived - because that is proven technology.

It also has a proven supplier base, which represents thousands of jobs in many states across the US.

And this is where we cross into the twilight zone of politics, where Congressional representatives, Senators, NASA management, corporate exploration vice presidents, trade unions and lobbyists combine to create a complex mix.

The job NASA administrator Michael Griffin has is to design an ETS that retains the capabilities the agency has at its centres because those centres employ voters, who vote for the politicians who vote through government spending, and provide enough work for the aerospace company's whose lobbyists will also bat for the NASA budget.

So don't be too surprised when Northrop Grumman, with its Orbiter supplying Boeing partner, wins the CEV contract and Lockheed is provided with the CLV upper stage. ATK has already been given the job of integrating the first stage of the CLV, so expect Lockheed to get the job of integrating the first and second stages together and Northrop Grumman the job of integrating the entire CLV/CEV stack - just as Boeing integrates the Shuttle stack today. Expect a similar division of labour for the CaLV.

Already US software company Stottler Henke Associates has declared that shuttle launch provider United Space Alliance (USA) has awarded it a contract to supply activity scheduling software for CEV astronauts. USA, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed, is a member of both CEV bidding consortiums.

Singapore Airlines' new Airbus A380 full flight simulator
(FFS), a huge already-liveried box perched precariously on its hydraulic rams,
was awaiting shipping from the manufacturer's site near London Gatwick airport.

 Fellow journalist Kevin Done - Financial Times aerospace
correspondent - and I were being shown the machine by its proud builders,
Thales, having first received a presentation on the global FFS marketplace. We
were briefed on how the company had come to be the chosen supplier of a simulator
to SIA, the A380's first customer airline.

 Then, with our Thales hosts, we walked across the
"drawbridge" into the simulator. The company's hardware and software engineers
- who were still fine-tuning the massive machine and uploading the latest
Airbus flight test programme data - took a short break so we could see it
working. There we stood, behind the pilots' seats, looking at the displays -
uncluttered but pregnant with information. Our hosts seemed to be attempting to
gauge what we wanted to do: to sit passively and watch a demo, or to get
involved. But for a moment, no-one said anything.

I was mainly interested in playing with the "aeroplane" but Kevin's
face had a "what now?" look about it. In the absence of instructions, I made for
the left hand seat and motored it forward until the position felt right. Kevin
was politely offered the remaining pilot's seat and nervously took it, looking
as if he wanted to remain in observer mode.

We hadn't received any flight or technical briefing. The
daytime visual display showed we were at a relatively anonymous runway-end
holding point; but where? Changi, said Thales' A380 project engineer Alan
Bailey informatively. Of course - where else? It's SIA's home airport. But the "weather"
was gin clear - none of Singapore's
normal grey skies.

 Sitting in what would have been the old flight engineer's
position behind the centre consol, Alan provided me with the excuse to do
something by releasing the parking brake and nudging the throttles. I looked
left to see if the approach was clear - feeling as if I really ought to,
although we were not being bothered with trivia like making or receiving radio
calls - and I took the tiller to turn the aircraft right to line it up. A
glance at the compass rose display showed we were on one of the three parallel
runway 20s, though I didn't ask whether L, C, or R. With the A380's flightdeck
at a level that's not far above the main deck and well below the upper deck,
there was no sense - as there is in the 747 cockpit - of being high above the
runway. It felt so normal I didn't even think about that at the time - only now
as I write this.

 Since it was clearly on the cards that we might go flying, I
asked for a rotate speed, and as an afterthought requested that the aircraft
should be loaded as if for a standard departure for London. This produced a little laughter but
then, accompanied by a bit of highly appropriate lurching as if the
suddenly-very-heavy aircraft was settling on its oleos, the weight was duly
keyed in. I was told that rotate would be about 160kt (300km/m) with flaps one. I watched
intrigued as, on the bottom left of the primary flight display, a little
schematic showed me the slats and flaps moving to where they should be. That
took some time, but with a beast that large it's what you would expect. Alan
suggested we belt up in case of unscheduled lurches since the machine still
needed fine tuning. I suspect it also entered his head that my handling skills
were a completely unknown quantity.

 And off we went, with throttles in manual and me asking what
pitch attitude to rotate to. She didn't feel like the massive beast she
represented, accelerating at a confident pace, and the rudder seeming effective
almost immediately. That was a relief because, as Alan admitted, the tiller
response still needed some tuning.

She rotated like aeroplanes do, and by that stage - as with
all transport aircraft - you have forgotten what's behind you and are just
flying the flight deck. I reached right - not far - and pulled the little gear
handle up, then levelled about 1,500ft because someone suggested we should turn
right and show Kevin what downtown Singapore looked like on a state-of-the-art
visual display.

 The navigation displays were in compass rose mode with no
destinations or tracks set. But the vertical display was magic - partly because
it was the first time I had "flown" in an aeroplane which has one. However you
could easily be seduced into over-controlling by the little twitching vector
arrows appearing here and there - on the speed and altitude tapes and on the
vertical display itself, the latter adjusting your vertical vector profile
however slight the deviation from level flight.

Since I hardly ever fly now and my heritage is C-130 clockwork
cockpits, too much stuff confuses me, so I was happy with rose mode. I know
what flight management computers can do for you, but don't have the skills in
manipulating them deftly. And for me, this exercise was about finding out
whether this awesome machine is, as the manufacturer claims, just another
Airbus.

 It is. After a short period in which I kept making small
corrections that confused the "aeroplane" and made it lurch slightly here and
there, I got into Airbus mode: just point the thing where you want it to go and
leave it alone.

 Having followed what was effectively a wide right hand
circuit I set about lining up for an approach to runway 20C. Alan had helpfully
put the autothrottle in and I forgot he had, so retarding the power levers
didn't make the difference I was expecting and I ended up hot and high. I threw
the approach away, going for a short left-hand visual circuit. This time there
was no problem. The aircraft settled nicely onto a manually flown approach. As
the runway came up to meet us we had no height call-outs because we hadn't set
them, so I just flared when it seemed right. The A380 made a civilised landing,
although I suspect it would have been a little firmer in reality than the
physical cues the simulator gave us. Directional control was easy with rudder,
but the tiller had a confusing delay on it. The thrust reversers were simple to
manipulate - only the two inboards have reverse - and the braking provided plenty
of power without snatching.

We turned off the runway. Taxiing back to the ramp was the
only difficult part of the trip, but I suspect Thales will have fixed the
tiller response by the time SIA takes delivery of its big new toy.

David Learmount / London

It's Sunday morning and as usual I'm wearing a numbered bib and doing agility tests in an aircraft hangar with 1,000 Germans I've never met before!

As you'll have guessed, the one thing we had in common is that we all thought it sounded interesting to be a volunteer in the first - and probably only - evacuation trial of the A380.

So here we are on a miserable, wet airfield in one of the biggest hangars in Europe at Airbus' Finkenwerder production facility next to the River Elbe.

I'm number 873, proud of it, and with a white bib numbered in black to prove it. We hand in everything in our possession which, though I don't realise it then, is going to make the next five hours pass very slowly indeed.

First the agility test. Line up, run along the wobbly board, bounce on the trampette, up on the vaulting horse, through the maze of cones without falling over and you're in. Immediately a tall, blond chap who looks like a candidate for the German decathlon team vaults about a metre over the horse.

No, no, no  says the supervisor sensing a long day ahead, you have to stand on it. We chuckle, the decathlete gives us a dark look, then grudgingly clambers onto the horse. He passes, we all pass.

We've handed in our watches and there then passes an interminable five hours or so while the 1,000 or so volunteers get whipped into whatever mysterious order Airbus, EASA and the FAA have decided. I don't speak any German - everyone else in the hall is speaking German. It's no fun at all.

We're all sitting at endless trestle tables, with neon lighting and a concrete floor, drinking soft drinks - the whole thing looks like a church-hall coffee morning on a gigantic scale.

An a capella group comes on and sings Lollipop, in English. It's cute. Then a sort-of comic comes in and talks in German. I laugh when everyone else does. The a capella group comes on again, with suits - I think the first performance was actually a sound-check.

We get fed two choices of near-indistinguishable creamy pasta that make us crave airline food, but presumably set us up with our slow carbohydrate fix for the afternoon's activity.

Finally we're on. We get an epic briefing of which I understand not a word. When the blonde with the number next to mine moves off, I follow her. We all warm up properly, now looking like a church-hall yoga session, and then it's through a sinister elevating steel connecting door to the other half of the hangar.

What we see is the nose section of an A380 in zinc-chromate green with one upper-deck door and one main-deck door exposed, and stairs leading to them. The rest of the aircraft is shielded by a huge black curtain so that we can't see which of the upper-deck slides has been pre-deployed, as agreed with EASA for safety reasons. The void under the aircraft is stacked with cardboard boxes so that we can't see through for the same reason.

We board the aircraft and are greeted by a Lufthansa cabin crew treating us as if we were all off across the Atlantic.

Boarding is painfully slow - the 853 seats are just numbered like our bibs from 1 to 1,200 and something with no indication of where they are across the aircraft. We're first on the top deck and have another interminable wait while all the other groups board. I'm in an aisle seat immediately ahead of what should be the lavs, the nearest door is immediately the other side of the lavs - no problem choosing the door anyway.

To get that many people in, the aircraft is of course in all-economy configuration with extremely basic seats and definitely no IFE. The window shades are down to stop us looking out at the slides again. The clocks came forward the previous night and I have the quick snooze I've needed for a couple of hours.

The cabin crew brief us with Airbus' first attempt at an A380 safety card, apparently showing the aircraft being strangled to death by 16 escape slides. The good news is that there is only one type of door on the aircraft - look, lift up the swing handle, hit the button, look again, jump onto the slide if there is one. I can do that I think.

We all sit in economy class for another half-hour or so. Where the lavs and/or galley should be there is actually a wooden cubicle with two letterbox shaped slots in it through which two pairs of eyes - one male and scary, the other female, sexy, and also scary - are blinklessly watching us. (I made the blink-bit up, but you get the idea.) I start to feel I know how lab rats feel.

A woman is led out of our cabin looking faint and doesn't return. Ironically she's got bib number 737 (for you conspiracy theorists.)

Two anonymous guys, presumably from the regulatory authorities, wander through throwing blankets and simulated baggage - lots of it - in the aisles. They also make notes about all of us on clipboards. I start to feel a hint of adrenalin. How we all behave in the next few minutes has very serious ramifications for the A380 programme one way or the other.

The lights are dimmed in a pre-take-off sort of way. We sit for a while and I start to lose focus. With no warning it goes totally dark, but there's no other indication of anything being amiss. I hear shouts in German, which as usual I don't understand, but I get the message.

I'm out of my seat like a snake and reach my favoured door just in time for the male flight attendant to turn round and tell me it's not working. I knew the regulators had disarmed half the doors, and now I know at least one of the ones they chose.

I know it's irritating, but I'm going to have to save what happens next for my feature piece in Flight International next week. Suffice it to say that a short while later I'm standing in the pitch black hangar looking back at the utterly surreal sight of the towering bulk of the A380 with slides hanging from it everywhere, bathed in a pale yellow light from the slides' LEDs, and literally hundreds of shadowy black figures plunging down them.

The simulated ground rescuers are screaming at them to run, the flight attendants are screaming at others to jump. Suddenly I realise the people coming down the slides are wearing uniform - it's the cabin crew and it's all over. I feel the adrenalin drain away and wonder why I also feel utterly exhausted after not really doing very much. I suspect I'm getting a tiny inkling of what the real thing must be like.

I'm certain it's been fast and, sure enough, already Airbus programme officials in their bright green tee-shirts are punching the air and hugging each other. One senior manager who I know mutters something about 75 seconds as he passes and we shake hands.

Finally it's all over, a German debrief that I don't understand, and off I go to hear Airbus and EASA give the rest of the media the official line.

Airbus CEO Gustav Humber, A380 programme chief Charles Champion, and a party of other Airbus execs have flown up from Toulouse this Sunday to see all this and I'm gently reminded that, had it gone wrong, they would all have been back in Hamburg to do it again next week. And if that went wrong then this multi-billion dollar programme would be in serious difficulties.

Journalistic objectivity aside, I'm pleased as Punch for them. And I forego the €60 that each volunteer gets. Sometimes it's worth it just to be there.

This thread  over with our good friends at Pprune prompts me to warn our pilot readers not to read Flight International while flying. It's the contribution by username Klink that got my attention.

The debate there is over the question of whether it is OK for airline pilots to read while in the cruise. Klink says you shouldn't read novels because they get too much of your attention. Stick to something lighter, he recommends.

Excellent point. As responsible publishers we're urging you not to read Flight International either - because if novels grab too much of your attention, then think what this cracking magazine will do! Especially the jobs section!!!

I'd be interested to hear suggestions as to suitable cockpit reading material which takes so little mental effort that it does not pose a hazard.

And I'm happy to point readers (who contact me privately I think) at publications that carry no risk of distracting their attention at all, leaving them bright and alert and ready to respond in an instant to their next TCAS RA. (Not that they'll need to be for much longer it seems.)

I've argued before that blacklists do little to help aviation safety, and the publication today of the European Union's long awaited list of banned and restricted carriers has done nothing to change my view. Here's the list in full.

The news is that any of you who were considering flying to or from Europe on the airlines of Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone or Swaziland will now find that impossible. It's also going to be even harder to put yourself in the tender hands of North Korea's state airline, and you can tear up your frequent flyer cards on a handful of carriers from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Rwanda, and the Comores. There's more detail, but you get the idea.

The EU says this will make a substantial contribution to air safety in Europe, but I can't for the life of me see how. A miniscule contribution perhaps - anyway, I hope nobody spent too much time producing the list. I rather fear they did, but maybe they just looked up the US FAA's IASA list which would have largedly saved them the trouble.

Perhaps most significantly for the people of Europe, the methodology that appears to have been employed would not have prevented any of the accidents that resulted in all the political furore that culminated in the publication of the list.

It's been said that the UK government has created more jobs for Poles than the Polish government in the just under two years since the European Union spread eastwards.

And judging by the number packing one of Ryanair's 737s from Stansted to Rzezsow in the south-east of Poland last week, Michael O'Leary is also playing his part in powering the engine of the UK's buoyant service sector, that relies on hundreds of thousands of well-educated, English-speaking, hard-working and impeccably-mannered central and east Europeans to wait our tables, build our office blocks, plumb our bathrooms and au pair our kids.

Without being unkind, Rzezsow is not going to have tourists flocking to an until-now hidden central European treasure. An hour from the Ukrainian border and the rugged Carpathian mountains, it's a pleasant enough place, with a old town square and cobbled streets surrounded by the usual drab Warsaw Pact-era tower blocks and industrial areas, although I admit that in the midst of a miserable late Polish winter, you probably don't see it at its best. And, although the town is the centre of Poland's thriving "Aviation Valley" - a cluster of western-owned manufacturing facilities and locally-run SMEs - there are no direct business flights and I was one of only a few "suits" on the aircraft.

The Ryanair flight is essentially a bus service for young ex-pats from a remote and impoverished corner of the country, who - thanks to O'Leary's rock-bottom prices - can commute to find work in a relatively rich country crying out for plumbers, bar staff and bricklayers. There are some one million Poles currently working in London and Ireland.

But, unlike Poles of previous generations, who left for North America in their millions in the 20th century rarely if ever to return to their homeland, these 21st century emigres can afford to fly back for a plate of mum's borsch every few weeks.

For the locals, the Ryanair flight - the only direct international connection from Rzezsow, although more are planned - is a lifeline. Ryanair offers several such routes throughout Europe. The airline may be a bete noire to UK travellers, who (while lapping up the low prices) moan about long airport queues, the free seating scramble, the restrictions on luggage and the non-negotiable 45-min minimum check in. But for Poland's army of ex-pats, Ryanair provides a route to a better standard of living.

I'll be writing about Poland's Aviation Valley and its place in the global aerospace industry in the 9 May issue of Flight International.

Well, perhaps predictably, Concorde is the winner of The Great British Design Quest run by the BBC and London's Design Museum. As readers of this article , of which I was the author, may have suspected - I don't agree with the outcome. Still, no fewer than 200,000 people voted so I'm not in a position to demand a recount.

But it should have been the Spitfire. I think the contest is about form and function - the Spitfire definitely wins on the second criterion, and I personally think it's also ahead on the first.

Fact is that the Spitfire did what it was designed to do better than Concorde did. Now it's true that the odds were stacked against the Concorde team, who were exploring a design regime way beyond anything that had gone before. But in the event RJ Mitchell's Spitfire was, I think, as good as it could possibly have been at the time - and in combat proved enduringly triumphant.

Aircraft aesthetics of course are largely a matter of taste, but it's not quite as simple as that. I think much of Concorde's attraction is to do with its photogenicity (such a word as that???). In the flesh there are plenty of angles from which it's not quite so pretty. The Spitfire on the other hand looks superb in any airborne pic (taxying, it often looks like an accident waiting to happen, and sometimes was), but it's also virtually impossible to find an ugly line on it even close-up.

Furthermore, aesthetics aren't just visual. There has never been anything that sounded quite as thrilling as a Rolls-Royce Merlin and I doubt there ever will. (Although the Olympus is not bad at all.)

I knew I was asking for trouble as soon as I produced my non-comprehensive list of aviation folks included in Forbes magazine's list of billionaires. So here's a couple of additions.

The obvious howler was not picking up Steven Udvar-Hazy, who Forbes credits with $2.4 billion, and whose life is an inspiration to everyone in aviation. After creating International Lease Finance (ILFC) with a reputed $150,000 plus a $1.7 billion bank loan, he sold it to AIG, continued to run it, and built it into the leasing colossus it is today. Famously, he found $66 million to create the Steven Udvar-Hazy Center at the National Air & Space Museum.

Around the time ILFC was becoming what it is now, an Irish entrepreneur called Tony Ryan was creating Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA) in Europe. That didn't end so happily and it essentially disappeared into ILFC rival GECAS, but Ryan and his family have done just fine out of aviation, most recently through their interest in Ryanair. Forbes doesn't mention Ryan, but in the UK he has been reported as having a fortune in the region of €1 billion. His interests are tied-up with his family, however, and it's hard to tell. But he could well join Udvar-hazy in the select breed of true aviation billionaires.

My colleague Nick Ionides in Singapore also mentions Naresh Goyal, the founding owner of India's Jet Airways which is now expanding into an international carrier. Goyal has interests in other forms of transport, but Forbes puts his fortune at $1.5 billion and it seems that most of it is from his airline. He's so well-liked we'll have to give him the benefit of the doubt!

Heard the one about the guy who got into a pilot-induced oscillation (PIO) in an A380? Well, it was me.

For non-pilots, a PIO is what happens when your brain gets out of synch with the aircraft's movements in one axis or another, so that all your corrective actions end up neatly timed to make its undesired behaviour get even worse.

I guess every pilot that ever lived has been there, but in modern Airbus types its quite hard to achieve because if you command the aircraft to fly somewhere, broadly speaking it will then do exactly that until you tell it to do something else. The way you generate a PIO in such an aircraft is to try to fly it like a 'conventional' type - hence my difficulty, which was happily short-lived once I stopped abusing Airbus' fine aeroplane.

It was all a bit of fun - but fairly serious fun as I was fortunate enough to visit the CAE-built A380 simulators at Toulouse. They're not perfectly representative of the aircraft's in-flight behaviour, because new in-flight data is constantly being input into the simulator as it is generated, but the first machine is now pretty good.

I got the chance to perform a daytime take-off, (huge) circuit, and night-time landing. I suppose I should say now my actual piloting experience is limited to about 200 hours of light jets and single-piston types, most of it more than 20 years ago.

I came away with two major impressions. First the ease of preparing for flight and then 'managing' the aircraft is truly remarkable. Airbus' menu-driven check-lists allied to the clever keyboard cursor control unit (KCCU), with its roller-ball and clicker falling comfortably to hand, makes the process a joy. Programming the flight management system, aided by a QWERTY keyboard, is similarly convenient.

And second the aircraft, like Airbus narrowbodies that I have handled in the simulator, is stunningly easy to fly, with the A380's inherent inertia being the only substantial differentiator from others in the family.

That said, my landing involved striking the runway a mighty blow a distressing distance past the piano keys, although at least on the centreline. As for most widebody novices, judging when the main-gear is going to touch down while your cockpit is still high above the runway is the tricky bit even with the synthetic voice altitude call-out. But, courtesy of Goodrich's landing gear and/or CAE's software we were safely down and staying there. I was wise enough to apply the parking brake and get out rather than explore the simulated grass while I figured out how to taxy the colossus around Toulouse's taxiways.

Over the next few months dozens of pilots will be learning to fly the A380 in the same simulator for real. I predict they are in for a terrific time.

 

Every now and then in aerospace research the man in his workshop can actually come up with something that the technology behemoths of Boeing and EADS and Lockheed Martin cannot.

Whether it’s bureaucratic cultural prejudice against radical ideas and the ‘play it safe’ thinking that goes along with that, I don’t know.

But the almost-lone inventor can still provide something intriguing despite the vast difference in resources.

It was with this expectation that I found myself standing outside 225A Star Road in Peterborough (pronounced "Peter-bra"), a UK city 2h north of London by train, on a chilly day earlier this month.

Forbes magazine's annual list of the world's billionaires gives plenty of support to the old chestnut that the way to become an aviation millionaire is to start out as a billionaire.

Turns out there are 793 dollar-billionaires that Forbes has managed to identify, so scanning the list is not a quick task - but I can't find anyone who made all that much of his or her pile out of aviation. There are a good few who have played around in it though, and some just starting.

Sir Richard Branson in Britain is the closest thing to an aviation billionaire I can find - and he isn't really one. But at 55 and, says Forbes, sitting on $1.8 billion, he has created about two and a half airlines with another one in the works. Plus he could be the first space tourism operator and has made the occasional balloon trip you'll recall.

Less well-known, but vastly richer, is Carlos Slim of Mexico who with $30 billion could no doubt afford to see his new low-cost airline Volaris go bust without losing much sleep.

But India's Vijay Mallya is taking more of a risk to his mere $1 billion with start-up Kingfisher Airlines and its order for Airbus A380s.

I think London City Airport must have contributed a fair proportion of Irishman Dermot Desmond's $1 billion - it's been a terrific business for him and makes far more sense than losing money in airlines.

Mind you, 70 year-old Carl Icahn, who one way or another has picked up $8.7 billion, showed with TWA that you don't actually have to have a successful airline to come out on top.

And in fact it's probably people like Paul Allen, who Forbes has in sixth place on its list with $22 billion, who is getting most satisfaction from his expenditure in aerospace by also exploring space on a private basis.

Last word from me goes to the man who, with $42 billion is number two on Forbes' list - Warren Buffett. The Sage of Omaha did not get into that position by indulging himself in aviation for its own sake, and his investments in FlightSafety and NetJets have got to be two of the canniest ever made in aviation. (Oh, and in the end he did succumb by shelling out on a business jet that he has admitted is essentially because he wants one.)

I'm sure there are others on the list - drop a comment below if you can find any and tell us what you think about investing in aviation.  

by Helen MASSY-BERESFORD, Flight International business reporter

An EADS event is always a lavish - and often slightly bizarre - affair, and once again the company spared no expense as it unveiled the results of its "best financial year ever" in Paris on Wednesday. An "informal" dinner the night before the big presentation for the hordes of international journalists and PR and communications representatives that EADS had summoned turned out to be about as informal as the A380 is small, taking place in a sumptuous banquet hall that one of the guests only half-jokingly compared to the hall of mirrors at Versailles, dotted with impressive, if somewhat incongruous, models of EADS's flagship products including the A400M and NH90.

But the following day, as co-chief executives Noël Forgeard and Thomas Enders - who dubbed themselves "CEO A" and "CEO B" for the occasion - fended off questions on A380 delivery delays and wing-ruptures, European Union launch investment for the A350 and the future of the A340 programme it was clear the journalists were not going to be blinded by the opulent surroundings into giving them an easy ride. Forgeard attempted to make light of the media furore caused by the earlier-than-expected rupture of the A380's wing during testing. "The noise made around that was incredible - it was a non-event." But the questions kept on coming and although he was adamant that the test would not need to be repeated, he did admit that the delivery of the first two aircraft to Singapore Airlines by the end of the year would be "a real challenge - but we will do it."

Forgeard admitted that the future of the A340-500 and -600 aircraft is currently a hot topic within the company. "It's an outstanding model in terms of performance but one shortcoming is that it has four engines so burns slightly more kerosene than twins. We have two options - either to keep it as a niche aircraft - and it sells as such…[or] if we want to widen the market of this model we have to cope with the fuel burn, which means a certain number of not-minor modifications of the aircraft. This file is on the desk of the Airbus management," he said, adding that it is also being debated at EADS level.

But with the A380 and A350 clear priorities for the group, the ailing airliner programme could be far down the list of priorities for Airbus: "it's not so much the money - it's the stress of engineering resources - we can't do everything at the same time," Forgeard said.

The EADS bosses were unable to avoid the contentious issue of launch aid, and Forgeard made no attempt to disguise his dwindling optimism that a transatlantic compromise can be reached: "our position has always been the same that we will refrain from drawing repayable launch loans as long as we see a realistic prospect of an amicable solution between the two sides of the Atlantic. The other side of the mirror is that as soon as it is clear that there is no prospect for such an amicable solution we shall draw the loans. Are we close to this situation? Yes I think we are closer and closer to this situation. But this does not kill a last chance if there is one."

The conference ended with a far-reaching message from "CEO B", Tom Enders, who made a plea for more cross-border co-operation in the European defence industry. This, he said, is key to EADS's future success, and its drive for internationalisation, which along with innovation and improvement is one of its corporate buzzwords for 2006. But, he said, it is not enough in evidence as things stand: "We are wondering whether the creation of EADS would still have been possible in 2006."
As the journalists left to file their stories we were given a final reminder EADS's pan-European panache as they presented us with a box of chocolates and a pink rose to celebrate that other great 8 March milestone - International Women's Day.

I'm sitting on the upper deck of the Qatar Airways stand at ITB - the world's largest travel industry fair in Berlin. The stand is wobbling, and Akbar Al Baker is not happy.

The chief executive of Qatar Airways is not a man used to anything less than perfection from his suppliers. He has just unveiled - in a swirl of dry ice and to the booming accompaniment of the 2001: a Space Odyssey theme - a mock-up of the airline's first class lounge cabin, a separate six-seat bar area that will slot between first class proper and business class on its four new A340-600s, and eventually on all its long haul fleet.

It's an innovation that Al Baker believes will give Qatar an additional edge in the battle for high-spending passengers on its Middle Eastern routes. He thinks it will take rivals such as Emirates, Etihad and the big European carriers two years to come up with something similar, by which time, he says, Qatar will have moved onto the next big idea.

With every detail worked out meticulously, the feel is more like a corporate jet than first class cabin. With carriers such as Qatar delicately balancing the cultural requirements of both high net worth traditional Arab customers and the new breed of Western business exectutives flying in and out of Doha, Dubai and the region's other booming cities, getting the first class cabin environment right is vital. Do you emphasise privacy over social areas? Middle Eastern design cues over a more American boardroom feel? Glitz and gizmos or modernist understatement?

Which brings us back to the wobbly stand. Minor earth tremors are not a common occurance in the Germany and Al Baker demands to see the German stand contractor. "The chief" wants answers. You get the feeling that "Wobble, what wobble?" or "It's just a function of the stand design" just aren't going to wash as excuses.

I wasn't around to find out what happened, but I suspect there may be a discrepancy between what the contractor expected to be paid and the amount on the cheque signed by Al Baker.

Meanwhile, the Middle Eastern section of the show - where Qatar, Emirates and others were situated - put me in mind of a wonky map of a surreal parallel universe Middle East...where Palestine nestles happily next to Israel, which in turn happily near-neighbours Syria, Lebanon and Iran. It's a Middle East of smiling children in traditional dress, ancient temples and forts, luxury resorts and big friendly welcomes, where the main rivalry is over who has the best beaches. There wasn't an Iraq stand, but, if there had been, I would have no doubt been urged to sample the delights of "bustling Baghdad".

"Each year brings corrections to the programme", Anatoly Perminov head of Russia's Federal Space Agency said dryly at the heads of agencies International Space Station (ISS) press conference last week His agency has been considering the long term future of the station. Its already had to swallow the hard fact that its science power module would not be launched by a Shuttle, as planned. Russia would like to see the station operated after 2016, which is the end of the ISS certified flight period. NASA meanwhile considers the very near future of the station.

As Perminov notes the Space Shuttle programme has changed again and now we are on 18 flights, including two contingency missions, which means its really sixteen and the 19 flight plan announced just before December is shelved. The nineteenth flight was supposed to be the Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. I do not think that will ever happen. NASA administrator Mike Griffin repeatedly says that NASA will determine at some stage whether or not it can do the Hubble mission. And he has the time to do it. Although Hubble will stop working in a couple of years it can sit in orbit for many years to come.

But being realistic the ISS assembly needs will end hopes for such a mission. NASA is soon to announce that Discovery/STS-121 will not take place in May. Its really expected in July followed by an October launch for Atlantis/STS-115 and then STS-117 is scheduled for December. But two missions in one year is the more likely outcome with -117 being pushed by glitches into January 2007. It would become one of around six launches NASA's planning has scheduled for next year. But then there is reality. NASA's extreme sensitivity to any technical hitches and foam loss will ensure that testing and analysis of anomalies that can be expected on STS-121 will hold up the launch schedule sufficientl to ensure -117 and STS-118 take up the first two quarters.

So at some point next year expect another re-evaluation of the ISS. Another final configuration. Russia might wish it had gone ahead with Mir 2 in the early 1990s instead of joining then President Bill Clinton's call for co-operation for the ISS. If Japan and the European Space Agency do not get their modules launched they might want to exchange that for astronaut time on the station. ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter will travel to the ISS on Discovery/STS-121 for the European agency's first six month mission aboard the station. It will be owed a lot more time on station if its Columbus laboratory is grounded.

Whatever happens with Shuttle and Station the partners should, as the Russians propose, continue with ISS. Although it could be complicated with US modules providing power and NASA no longer formally part of the endeavour, the station itself is an important feat of engineering and for long term space travel its systems and their reliability are going to be key. There is no other test bed available for technology that an inter-planetary ship would need for a Mars mission. A post-NASA ISS should also consider working with the Chinese, and possibly the Indians.

An incomplete station with realistic research goals and partners that can meet their obligations could actually be better for the long term needs of human space exploration.

 

 

 

 In a world where new aircraft at air shows are about as rare as profitable US airlines, the mammoth Airbus A380 continues to hog the limelight wherever it goes. Singapore’s Asian Aerospace was no exception and, after witnessing another flawless A380 flight demonstration, Flight International did not hesitate when invited by Airbus to tour the star of the show.

Our main guide was the affable Airbus flight test division vice president Fernando Alonso who had flown as flight test engineer on the first flight of MSN001. Sadly admitting to having no family links whatsoever with the world champion Formula 1 racing driver who shares his name, Alonso proudly showed us around his charge, test aircraft MSN004 (pictured above) and the first A380 to receive a full airline livery.

Escorting us along a main deck (pictured below) stuffed with banks of flight tests stations, data storage units, power management devices and water barrels used for ballast and controlling the aircraft’s centre of gravity, Alonso‘s enthusiasm was almost infectious.

Up close and personal, the first impressions of the main deck are its sheer width and spaciousness. Although cluttered with racks of data gathering and telemetry devices, as well as several hundred kilometres of orange test wiring, there is no disguising the voluminous potential of this goliath. The vertical sidewalls are a striking feature, allowing a maximum width of 6.6m (21ft 7in), and contrasting with the curved interior sides of virtually any other aircraft we had seen.

Overhead, the exposed ducting of the air conditioning system rattled sharply every few minutes as the system was purged to blow out the ice that formed quickly inside the piping in the heavy humidity of the Singaporean afternoon. Now and then an errant shard would escape the confines of the non-standard piping, and bounce around the floor like a short-lived pebble.

Heading aft, we were given our first opportunity to view the vast spread of the wings from inside the fuselage (pictured above), and truly appreciate its massive 845.8 sq m (9,100sq ft) area as well as its dramatic inboard dihedral. Gazing out at the most expansive wing in commercial history was one thing, climbing the spiral aft stairway (part of which is pictured below) was yet another. Following Alonso up the stairs, which are recessed into the curvature of the aft pressure bulkhead, we emerged on to the upper deck

It was up here, perhaps more than on the main deck, where the true feeling strikes you of being on an aircraft completely and dramatically different from anything else you’ve experienced - let alone flown. The effect contrasts strongly, for example, with that of climbing to the club-like, narrow body top deck of the Boeing 747.

To all intents and purposes at the top of the A380 aft stairs the cabin of an A330 stretches out in front of you (pictured above), and to either side you glimpse a wing (pictured below) that appears to be proportionally sized, rather than being in reality a whole deck below you! 

Wondering if the horizontal stabiliser is easily visible from the top deck we peer out of a window and clearly see the tip of the right hand unit (pictured above). Hardly surprising really, considering the A380’s stabiliser span is around 2m wider than the wingspan of the 737-200. Going forward we then descend another unique feature, a wide, double stairway taking us down to the spacious vestibule area by door one (below).

Here A380 experimental test pilot Peter Chandler takes over the tour and guides us up several steps to the forward mezzanine area housing the flight deck. The cockpit door opens up to - not surprisingly - one of the largest, roomiest flight decks ever designed for a modern jet transport. Chandler’s 'front office', instantly familiar to Airbus pilots because of its side stick controllers, incorporates eight liquid crystal display panels and two oddly bulbous protrusions on the pedestal either side of the power levers. These are the famous keyboard cursor control units or (KCCUs), which are fancy names for a cursor control trackball and selector device that allows the crew to point and click their way through the flight in comfort, no matter what the turbulence outside.

While my colleagues attempt to elucidate from Chandler if the industry has come up with a less politically correct term for these anthropomorphic bulges, I look to see if the wingtips are visible from the cockpit. It turns out there are no naughty names for the KCCU (yet) and no sight of the wingtip - unless you really press your face right up against the glass, suggests Chandler. I point my camera over the top of the glare shield to see what the view over the nose is like (below). It turns out this is the one area where the view belies the size of the behemoth behind us. The ramp appears quite close, thanks to the mid-level positioning of the flight deck, and the rather snub-nosed profile of the A380.
 

All too soon it is time to leave. A TV camera crew “needs another shot” and we are getting close to press conference time ourselves. Before we go, however, we take a final stroll round and under the aircraft with A380 product marketing director Richard Carcaillet. For a while we stand, enveloped in the balmy embrace of the Singapore afternoon, in a sort of awed silence beneath the imperious tail (below), rising to an amazing 24.3m (six stories) above us. “You really have to see it, to believe it,” says Carcaillet. For once, we journalists have simply nothing more to say.