Iron Bird is set for take-off

THE LARGEST airliner the world has ever seen is poised to come to life in Toulouse. The test rig for the flaps, undercarriage and other mechanical systems of the first super-jumbo airliner, or Iron Bird in aeronautical jargon, will soon be powered up.

Meanwhile, in Broughton, North Wales, they are assembling the wings for Aircraft 001 in the A380 super-jumbo programme. In Bremen and Hamburg, the main fuselage sections of the 555-seat, double-deck passenger jet are being crafted.

More sections, from Naples, have arrived in Saint Nazaire, northern France, for connection with the airframe cornerstone, the wingbox, made across the river in Nantes.

In a few months' time, these sections, together with the tailfin and tailplanes from Puerto Real in Spain, will begin their journey on a specially built 5,200-tonne ship, equipped with the world's largest watertight stern door, to Bordeaux, on the west coast of France.

From there, a gigantic truck, purpose-built by Mercedes, will take three nights to haul them 330 miles inland to Toulouse, where a new 120ft-high assembly hall will gather them in.

Dismissed by many at its launch three years ago as a commercial folly, the Airbus A380 super-jumbo will soon become a real, aluminium, carbon fibre and steel flying machine.

'We now have 129 firm orders,' says Briton Chris Stonehouse, Airbus vice-president for the A380 customer programme. 'If you include the options, it is almost 180, and we still have three more memorandums of understanding that we are working on at the moment.'

With a list price of $275m (£173m) per plane, orders from 10 airlines plus aircraft leasing companies already total e36bn (£25bn). Airbus is confident it will sell the 250 planes it needs to break even, and is optimistic that orders will total 750 by 2020.

British Airways has yet to sign up but Airbus seems confident it will have to if it is not to lose customers to rivals such as Virgin Atlantic, Singapore Airlines, Air France, Lufthansa and Emirates, and its own partner Qantas, which have all ordered the plane.

Aircraft 001, powered by British Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines and fitted with heavy test equipment, is scheduled to take off from Toulouse for the first time in early 2005, heading a six-plane test programme that is expected to take 15 months.

The aim is to achieve simultaneous airworthiness certification from the US Federal Aviation Authority and the European Joint Aviation Authorities so that the first production plane, which is being built for Singapore Airlines, can enter service in 2006.

Airbus 80% shareholder Eads and its British 20% partner BAE Systems have given Airbus approval to spend $5.1bn developing the plane, with a further $3.1bn being invested by commercial partners and $2.5bn in loans from European governments.

With the capacity to build 48 super-jumbos a year, Airbus will be pleased to see more orders to cover the development costs and achieve respectable profitability. But the chances of a comparable rival from Boeing - which builds the 747, currently the world's largest airliner - diminish with every passing month while every new test on the Iron Bird will bring it closer to lift-off.