Seems to be heading to East Midlands now. How it's going to get to Cardiff from there? Road?

Perhaps a curfew at Cardiff, it was zero dark thirty, or thereabouts? Although that would surprise me. Otherwise the company may have another shipment from EMA. Road Transport may indeed be the chosen method.

Some of you are probably reading "the other forums" (search for "deroutement cause dommages") but I copy some of the info found there (obviously, not official).
- ferry flight maybe for December 6th;
- maybe a/c will be under Airbus registration for that flight;
- it is mentioned that the 1st AF A380 3-eng ferry was in 2012, out of JFK.

About to taxi to the runway, not sure on callsign

e: Air France 371V
runway 26, wind 16020G30

in the air
 

Flight Radar24 is tracking it in flight under AFR371V, enroute to CDG.

Just passed overhead on takeoff.

Over the coast at 35000 ft

Currently at 560 knots ground speed @ 37k. I'm guessing that means all four engines are operating?

They did full power run ups on both outboard engines after they brought it out of the hangar.

That makes sense - there was never any subsequent confirmation of the 3-engined ferry scenario after that initial soundbite from an unnamed BEA investigator that Reuters initially quoted.

What a waste of about 300 posts here :)

Just folks not letting the facts get in the way of a good story. :O

Aircraft landed at CDG a few moments ago.

Why not Toulouse?

Will they have kept it heated while it was stood? Must have been cold out there...

It was hangared up until 2 days ago.

As a general rule, manufacturers are good at designing and building aircraft, but they don't necessarily have skills and expertise in repairing them, at least not as much as airlines do.

While Airbus will no doubt be involved in developing any necessary repair schemes, AF will be better equipped to supply the manpower and other resources to accomplish the repairs.

Not necessarily - a 747 can happily cruise at 37k Mach .84 on 3 engines providing it's not too heavy (been there, done that during 747-8 flight test). I assume an A380 would be similarly capable.
Doing a high power run up of the replaced engine is more meaningful.

Well, the manufacturers have special repair teams for structural repair of stranded aircraft. That is done very often. Sometimes they do the whole work where the plane is stranded, sometimes they just get the aircraft repaired so that it can be ferried to some other facility.

Given everything else that goes on there I wonder if Airbus even have the space/hangarage at Blagnac...(? genuine question) it might well be more convenient for them to shuttle people as and if needed up to Paris and use AF facilities at CDG than to tie up AB resources and space at Toulouse.