Gordon Brown on the flight deck: can I check my hotmail on this?

Bet he's wondering if he can introduce a cup holder tax or something.

anyone know what time shes scheduled to take off ?

0555L Fri, 27L

According to the BBC, it has a joystick instead of a steering wheel!

Whatever will those clever people at Airbus come up with next? :O

SoS

Ed Strongman giving Gordon Brown the executive cockpit tour on BBC 24! :)

0700L tomorrow i believe is ETD
ah maybe its 0555 then,im not sure!i heard 0700 :)

get gordon brown out the LHS!

Whatever happens, I think we'll end up with Gordon Brown in the LHS sooner rather than later :uhoh:

derekvader / allyn

I believe it to be the same beast as I toured around back in Feb. On the lower deck are the various control / monitoring systems. Upper deck has a few rows of seats at the front with the remainder of each deck filled with ballast tanks, cables, and cameras and the occasional seat for the test crew.

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showpos...postcount=1374

Regardless of the number of times I've seen it it is still an awesome sight and it made it much more real today seeing it land in such familiar surroundings.

With Gordon in the cockpit (looking bored), it showed how small and cramped it can get in there.

Great moment on Sky just now...'This is the existing biggest airliner, the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet'..... cue picture of early 737.:confused:

Hi,

would anyone know the approximate landing distance (for the test stage weight) required for this machine?

Email from BAA:

We apologise for the technical difficulties that you may have experienced whilst
viewing the BAA Heathrow Airport A380 webcast at 1300hrs (BST) today.

As a result of this we will be re-broadcasting the A380 webcast at the following
web address www.heathrowairport.com/a380webcast at 16:15hrs (BST) this
afternoon. Please log on to watch the uninterrupted broadcast of this historic
event.

We apologise for any inconvenience that this may have caused you.

Kind regards,

The BAA Media Team

What were those huge yellow pipes they were hooking up to it on the stand? They came from the underside of the air bridge, and looked about 30-40cm in diameter. Does it use terminal-based air conditioning when sitting on the ground? Is that a permanent feature of the A380, or unique to this one since it is full of extra computer gear?

Over the houses in Myrtle Ave.
http://www.petermcsorley.com/f-wwdd1.jpg

Just got back from Heathrow. Was standing at the end of 27L for about an hour along with some 500 other people. :)

Anyone know why there were 2 BA 744's landing on 27L shortly before the A380 came in?

Kirk

Heathrow is BA's Jumbo base and they do have quite a few of them...

i was there, stood next to a guy with a scanner and he said so that accurate wind reports could be obtained from the 2x BA B744 crews.
This would be relayed to the A380 flightdeck. it did get very windy around 1pm. Did you see how the road (A30) traffic came to a standstill each time a large aircraft passed over... Its only a BA 747!

It did a nice fly past of the Tower at Liverpool :O

Haha I did. Also saw one lorrydriver actually stop (when the A380 was on final) and take a picture with his mobile. :)

Thanks for advice given earlier.

My Son's school (a mile from OCK) all turned eyes upwards in the playground and got not one pass, but four, the last of which was under blue sky.

Whole school very impressed. Thanks again.

Thanks for that link:ok: Didn't work too well during the event, but the whole replay was fine ;)

Heres my little wobbly video that I took from the Westbase carpark!!! Enjoy!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...82240557942331

Great stuff. :ok:

I think it was great to see that new aircraft are still attracting the crowds! Its a great moment to see a new a/c!! I still remember seeing the first B777 to visit the uk and also the controller confirming...."United 777, confirm aircraft type" OOOOPS

A380 at Heathrow
 

Just watched a couple of video's of the A380
'Jumbo-jumbo' landing at Heathrow - and was
surprized how buffeted it was on its approach!
I know that its near empty and the winds might
have been significant but ive not seen a B747
acting so bad!

Did anyone else see it thus.......

MM

Was it my imagination or was it louder than that BA 744 that came in before it?

I think the pic above was cropped poorly so I resized....................

And let in an estate agents board - or it was put in! it was NOT in the original and the picture was not available to you to alter. You breached the guy's copyright. Now you get a rest from PPRuNe??



PPP

A380; Huge thanks to MAN control!!!!
 

Wel what i day, i knew that the A380 was flybying broughton at around 11:10...
i live in atherton, the beluga's frequently fly over en-route to broughton so i knew i had the chance to see it....

i knew i had to go outside at about 10:50 to at least get a look, so we went to an advantage point near astley moss, we waited and waited.....nothing....

i knew that it would be coming from ROSUN, then heading south west, normally aircraft usually take a more northernly track south west, so i had to hope it would come more south so i could get a good close up....

10:50 passed, me and dad both thought it had already passed, but we still waited another 15 mins, the cloud cover was getting better as time passed, but still nothing...

we had enough so we drove off, we strolled along this country lane and stopped again trying to see find a gap in the cloud and we did, over warrington, way west of us...

but still nothing....

my dad just happens to look northeast towards Bolton and he says "Is that it ?!?!?!", within a millisecond i look around and see a low flying aricraft, i looked straight at the wings so i could determine whether it was the A380 or not....IT WAS!!!

I immediatley unhooked my seatbelt, open the door and rand off to get a good advantage point, and there it was it all its glory, the Airbus A380!, we was both completley taken back, the mere size of this bird at 4,00ft is just amazing! i continued to monitor it, it seemed to turn towards liverpool, but it must of been on base for broughton.....

i am never going to forget this day....seeing the A380 before anybody at broughton and London, the feeling is just fanatastic....no seriously i give a big thanks to manchester ATC was vectoring this a/c with such precision :)

ive been interested in this program for day one and to see it sucessfully flying is just a fantastic feeling, good luck to everyone involved in making this man made marval, hats of to you....

well done brought!!


cheers

scott w

Just home from Berlin Airshow.

Saw the beast taxi out and take off this morning.

Very poor mobile video as it taxied past me if you're interested, we were allowed pretty close!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...88505503564878

FWIW 747FOCAL it seemed very quiet on take off but by your quick edit of above photo I sense the jealousy pouring out!

Has anybody got any ATC recordings of the big bird landing (like the had for the last arrival of concorde)?

Many thanks

To be honest, two 747's came over head shortly before the A380 and both seemed louder than the A380!!!

Nah, not jealous. Just have a sense of humor that Brits don't get. You know how many times I have seen a 747 over that same house pic on the net???

:\

Probably PCA pipework. Pre Conditioned Air. Not unique to that particular a/c, or a/c type.

we took a number of calls in Flight Briefing from spotters bemoaning the fact that the a/c went North from OCK and did its downwind/base leg from that side of London. Was also surprised that two callers reported being in North London with good views across Central London and beyond but were unable to see the a/c at all. Can only put it down to the lowish cloudbase (BKN030), even though the a/c had descended to 3000' before turning finals (at least that's what our ATM was displaying)

It wobbled a bit on the last two miles - should make for interesting viewing on a stormy day with a gusting Southerly crosswind!

BTW, what happened to all the spotters on the T2 carpark roof around 1pm? were u turfed off by Plod?

Was surprised at how quiet the bird is, especially as it was announced by Katie Derham on the 12:30 ITN news today that the A380 was "powered by 900 RR engines" :rolleyes: Then later announced that it was "almost exactly one o'clock."
Anyone spotted any other media inaccuracies about the 380 today?
:ugh:

Have you ever kissed a girl son??? :E :} ;)

airbus a380
 

Hi, just a thought like many thousands of people I witnessed the Airbus A380 today every person with me said the same thing its Big and thats it. An old aviaton term says If it looks right it probably is, the A380 is an ugly s.o.b its going to need some fancy paint job to make look ok .New queen of the sky no that still belongs to the 747,A380 for me no thank you Boeing may be about to make history repeat its self.the Boeing 787 will change the way how to make airplanes the days of metal airplanes is over the A380 may be already out dated

[capt clarence oveur] Jimmy, have you ever seen a grown man naked? [/capt clarence oveur]

Thanks for sharing that with us. :rolleyes:

Did you not see the A380 thread at the top of this page?

Has now!:ugh:

.....and look at the rudder inputs needed to keep her straight on the runway....

Jimmy, have you ever been to a Turkish prison?!

I'm guessing just after 07:00.