From Airbus press conference today (20/7/03) at Farnborough.
The A380 programme
“We are on schedule for a first flight early next year. The business case is fully on track. We are on target to meet our guarantees to customers and to put an end to dubious figures floating around, I confirm that the maximum weight empty of the A380 is less than two per cent above our internal target, less than one per cent of the maximum take off weight”. Later he clarified that this was only 0.1 to 0.2 different from our computerised predictions.
Seemingly things are not so bad after all!