When the first A380 landed in Hamburg

It is November 8, 2005:around 8,000 onlookers with cameras and binoculars have gathered on the Elbe dyke and at the edge of the company airport in Hamburg-Finkenwerder. They are waiting for the first landing of an A380 in the Hanseatic city. In the afternoon, the giant aircraft hovers over the Elbe and lands on the Airbus site. The third aircraft of this type ever built took off two and a half hours earlier from Toulouse, where the French Airbus colleagues assembled the aircraft, and flew a wide loop over northern Germany before landing. The Hamburg company should now install seats for almost 500 passengers and paint the machine.

European competition for the jumbo jet

The A380 is a European co-production involving factories in the UK and Spain. It is a good 72 meters long and has a wingspan of almost 80 meters, significantly more than the American Boeing 747, the jumbo jet that the Europeans now want to compete with. The Super Airbus has been in development since the turn of the millennium, after experts had predicted an increasing demand for wide-bodied aircraft.

In April 2005, the first A380 took off from Toulouse on its maiden flight. Despite the high price of officially around 240 million euros, 50 aircraft have already been ordered. The main customers are the Arab airline Emirates and Lufthansa. However, the first A380 will be delivered to Singapore in 2007. Airports around the world will soon be expanded, runways and gates adapted, huge maintenance hangars built for the world's largest commercial aircraft.

Finkenwerder gives the megajet an enthusiastic welcome

In Hamburg, November 8th is a day of giants. Because on the same day, the largest passenger ship in the world, the "Queen Mary 2", also calls at the Hanseatic city, where it is to be serviced at the Blohm + Voss shipyard. "For many, including me, a dream has come true today," says Hamburg's then mayor Ole von Beust (CDU) on the Airbus site, where thousands of employees in overalls or suits welcomed the machine with applause and are now surrounding it curiously .

In the coming months they will install the interior equipment, more than 60 tons of material, will paint the wings, which are almost as long as a soccer field, and the fuselage, which still shows a pattern of gray and green parts.

The spectators on the dyke are also impressed by the dimensions of the four-engined giant aircraft, as well as by the low noise level of the aircraft. "We are four decibels quieter than the Airbus A340-600, which has been the quietest wide-body aircraft to date," explains the German test pilot Wolfgang Absmeier, who transferred the Airbus from Toulouse, which means a reduction of the so-called noise footprint by 50 percent. The machine can cover 15,000 kilometers without a stopover, easily commuting between the major airports in Europe, Asia and America.

The A380 brings jobs to Northern Germany

The workers in Finkenwerder welcomed the A380 with a banner that read in large letters:"We welcome our future". They are also to produce fuselage parts for the megajet and deliver them to Toulouse. The finished machines are then delivered from Hamburg to customers in Europe and the Middle East. Above all, the A380 program means jobs for the region:300 skilled workers are needed in November 2005 alone.

Processes don't stop Airbus expansion

However, the Airbus site needs to be expanded for the A380 and that is causing controversy. For years, residents, farmers, the neighboring parish and environmental organizations have been suing against the expansion, expropriation of land and partial filling in of the Mühlenberger Loch, the largest contiguous freshwater mudflat in Europe. However, you are unsuccessful.

The Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND) repeatedly calls for the fulfillment of EU guidelines for the creation of compensation areas. "The Airbus expansion has largely destroyed a unique protected area, the intervention has not been compensated for even fifteen years after the building permit was granted and hundreds of millions in taxes have been wasted on an aircraft that will permanently be in deficit," said Manfred Braasch, State Director of the BUND Hamburg in November 2015.

Not met expectations

In the meantime, the A380 is also controversial from an economic point of view. So far, it has not lived up to the expectations aroused when it landed in Finkenwerder for the first time. Despite high production costs, there were delivery problems for years, even defects in active machines such as hairline cracks in the wings, leaking doors and scorched power cables.

A discontinued model?

In the meantime there is competition from more modern and above all cheaper long-haul aircraft from Boeing, with the Airbus A350 even from the company itself. The sales figures are still lagging behind the assumptions made at the time. Therefore, in December 2014, doubts about the future of the A380 beyond 2018 were voiced at Airbus, even though the aircraft manufacturer backtracked shortly afterwards.

2018:Bulk order from Emirates

At the beginning of 2018, Airbus can then announce good news. After a three-year lull, a large order is received:the Emirates airline orders a total of 36 A380 aircraft. There are 20 firm orders and 16 options. The new order secures the production of the A380 for at least ten years, says Airbus sales director John Leahy. However, production will be throttled:From 2020, only six units will be completed per year - in 2017 there were still 15 machines.