The first Qantas A380 broke cover at Airbus's Hamburg's plant last week. The aircraft is now to undergo final testing ahead of delivery to the airline this summer.
Airbus says the Rolls-Royce Trent 900-powered aircraft (MSN014) was rolled out of the paint hangar at its Finkenwerder plant on 31 May.
This whole process for the A380 - including cleaning, masking etc - takes two weeks, but the actual application of paint takes only 10% of the time, says Airbus.
Each of the three layers of paint and three layers of clear top coat takes 24 painters around 60min to apply, it adds.
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© Airbus / C.Brinkmann |
The Qantas A380 will undertake a "cabin first flight" from Hamburg to test the behaviour of the interior under flying/pressurised conditions. It will then be ferried to Toulouse for customer acceptance test flying and delivered to Qantas "later in the summer", says Airbus.
Qantas has 20 A380s on order. It will equip its aircraft with 450 seats including 14 in first class, 72 in business class, 32 in premium economy class and 332 in economy class.
AirSpace galleries - Airbus A380
Aircraft profile - Airbus A380
Source: Flight International
