Airbus A380 is Revealed

On January 18, 2005, the Airbus A380 is revealed to an ecstatic crowd in France. The A380 is currently the largest passenger carrying aircraft in commercial service. The A380's upper deck extends along the entire length of the fuselage, with a width equivalent to a wide-body aircraft. This gives the A380-800's cabin 550 square metres (5,920 sq ft) of usable floor space, 40% more than the next largest airliner, the Boeing 747-8, and provides seating for 525 people in a typical three-class configuration or up to 853 people in an all-economy class configuration. The A380-800 has a design range of 8,500 nautical miles (15,700 km), serving the two longest non-stop scheduled flights (as of March 2016) in the world, and a cruising speed of Mach 0.85 (about 900 km/h, 560 mph or 490 kt at cruising altitude).

"Lovers of air travel find it exhilarating to hang poised between the illusion of immortality and the fact of death." - Alexander Chase