This video shows the typical life of an Airbus A340, one of the most popular long-range airliners in the world. As a passenger, and even as a pilot, you never get to see this beast from most of these angles—especially from inside one of the jet engines.
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Some of our hobbies do consume us in a very serious manner, and Swiss RC aircraft enthusiast Peter Michel happens to be part of that select group where they eat, drink, and sleep with their minds concentrated solely on just one project at that point in time. In November, Michel showed off his huge scale model of a Singapore Airlines Airbus A380 at a club meeting in Switzerland, bringing along with it some pretty amazing specifications that definitely had pulses racing and jaws dropping.
A quartet of JetCat P120 jet turbines will power this unique RC model, where each of them will offer approximately 30 pounds of thrust. Of course, that is a far cry from the 280,000 pounds on the actual Airbus A380, but it is more than enough to deliver a similar power to weight ratio, considering how this model weighs a mere 155 pounds in comparison to the fully loaded 1.2 million pound Airbus A380. Too bad the small 2.5 gallon fuel tank of this model allows it to remain in the skies for slightly more than 8 minutes. Michel required approximately 5,000 hours and 8 months of work to come up with this 1:15 scale A380, where plenty of styrofoam and lightweight balsa wood went into its construction.
Huge RC Airbus A380 Model Aircraft Takes To The Skies original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Careening through the air 30,000 feet above the ground can be a brutal experience. To help us cope, airlines have evolved some pretty sophisticated on-demand entertainment in the form of games, movies, internet, and the occasional backrub. Here’s a look at some of the ambitious ideas that got us there, the failures along the way, and concepts we might see in the future.
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Let’s hope none of us ever have to be put in a situation where we have to evacuate an airplane but this 2006 evacuation test of an Airbus A380 makes our current plane deplaning process look like a complete waste of time. The test incredibly emptied out all 873 passengers of the plane in less than 80 seconds. Typical planes in real life take around 10 minutes. Something is not adding up!
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What’s it like to fly the A350? Only a handful of pilots know for sure, but Jean-Michel Roy has a pretty good idea. The Airbus test pilot has flown a variety of yet-to-be-certified aircraft over the years, and he’ll soon step behind the controls of the company’s answer to Boeing’s Dreamliner, the A350. While the first batch of pilots are back at the aviation giant’s Toulouse HQ preparing for the next test flight, Roy is schmoozing with customers a few hundred miles to the north, at the Paris Air Show. It’s an arguably safer task for the industry vet, but something tells us he’s itching to climb aboard this latest wide-body aircraft. We were hoping for such an opportunity here in Paris, but a delayed rollout means attendees will be lucky just to see the A350 perform an unscheduled flyover sometime over the next few days, with a cockpit mockup serving to satisfy airline execs for now.
As deep-pocketed buyers queued up for a first look at the A350 flight deck, we managed to sneak a quick peek, with Jean-Michel Roy on hand to answer questions and provide a video tour. As you might expect, the cockpit is as modern as they come, with large LCDs taking the place of traditional avionics. In fact, the layout looks more like something you’d find on a stock broker’s desk — it’s quite a contrast to the aging panels many commercial pilots still use today. The overhead system controls are presented in a layout similar to what you’ll find on an A320 or A330, as is the flight control unit just below the windshield. The screens below, however, are much more accessible, offering up aircraft manuals, charts, checklists, camera feeds, weather information — you name it. A trackball and keyboard make it easy to enter info, while side-mounted joysticks let the pilots control orientation while also serving to create a cleaner look and feel. Fly past the break for a first-hand look at this state-of-the-art demo deck.
Gallery: Airbus A350 cockpit tour
Filed under: Transportation
With the Paris Air Show scheduled to lift off in earnest on Monday, Airbus is hoping to steal a bit of the limelight. After being conceived in 2004, the A350 finally took the public skies today in France, showcasing a highly-efficient Rolls-Royce XWB engine all the while. The jet is arguably being launched to compete with Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, and as you’d expect, it’s the magic inside of the shell that’s most impressive. The Trent XWB engine was built specifically for the A350, replete with titanium blades and a mixture of technologies that have led to it being deemed the “world’s most efficient” airplane engine… as said by Rolls-Royce, anyway. To date, over 600 orders for the A350 have been placed, but the outfit is hoping to land even more contracts in the days ahead. Ideally, each will ship with a power port in every seat, satellite internet connections and an allergy for mechanical failures. (A boy can dream, right?)
Filed under: Transportation
Source: CNN, The New York Times, BBC
What you’re looking at here is history; the triumph of seven years of design and engineering. Today, the Airbus A350 XWB completed its first flight. Here’s the video of the mammoth taking to the skies:
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