KEY POINTS:
At a few minutes after 8am tomorrow Singapore time, aviation history will be made at Changi International Airport.
The world's largest, most luxurious passenger airliner - with a wingspan nearly the size of a football pitch and first-class "suites" complete with double beds - will lift off for its maiden flight from Singapore toSydney.
The debut of the A380 Superjumbo, nearly two years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, is the culmination of an audacious gamble by its creators, the European consortium Airbus.
Essentially, Airbus is betting that more and more people will be travelling longer and longer distances, between continental "hubs" such as London and New York, Sydney and Beijing.
Both economically and environmentally, they hope, airlines will find the double-decker A380 the most efficient way of meeting ever-rising numbers of ever-more-demanding passengers.
It is a vision that has yet to be tested against the harsh realities of modern air travel. Airbus has found itself, for instance, having to reassure sceptics about the potential effects of its new superjet on congestion at already crowded airports.
But the new plane has won some unlikely allies, such as Airport Watch, which has been leading a campaign against "aggressive go-for-growth" aviation policy in Britain.
Its chairman, John Stewart, who has been helping residents to fight against the expansion of Heathrow Airport, said that "at least in theory, the A380 could be a win-win".
"The main benefits in air travel are for the passengers, but the problems are the planes. If - and of course, this remains to be seen - this new larger plane means you could keep the number of flights the same, or even bring them down, then it would be a good thing."
Tomorrow's initial Singapore Airlines A380 flight will be an all-for-charity affair. The first pair of first-class tickets sold on eBay went to an Australian for $136,000.
Next Sunday, the plane will go into regular service between Singapore and Sydney at a cool £3500 ($9500) one way for one of its double-bed suites.
Early next year, as more of the long-delayed A380s trickle into service, Singapore Airlines will begin a daily service to Heathrow.
Next will be Emirates Airlines, which will get its first A380s next northern summer. Both British Airways and Virgin are due to take delivery of the plane around the time of the 2012 Olympics.
The last similarly bold leap in commercial aircraft design was in 1970 when Boeing launched its 747. The Jumbo has gone on to become one of the most successful passenger jets ever, with its latest version due to enter service in 2009. Its staying power has put pressure on Airbus, which bet its financial future on the A380.
It is, by any measure, an extraordinary plane. Unlike the 747, with its two-tier seating at the front of the plane, Airbus' Superjumbo is a full double-decker - big enough to accommodate more than 800 seats if the entire plane were turned over to economy class. It is nearly 25m tall, 73m long and 80m from wingtip to wingtip. Snaking within are 480km of wires.
Perhaps the best way to get a true sense of the A380's vastness is to visit the small Welsh town of Broughton, where Airbus UK has been assembling wings.
Inside a cavernous, purpose-built factory, the wings, each pair held together by 750,000 rivets, take shape. As a finished wing is readied for shipment to the assembly plant in Toulouse, one of the blue-shirted engineers says he still wonders at the scale of it all.
"The wing-flaps," he says, "are the size of the entire wing of a short-haul passenger jet."
There was a time this year, however, when Broughton feared it was making wings for a Superjumbo that would never fly. In a quintessentially European snag, wiring and other problems in the plane's fuselage - half built by the French, half by the Germans - led to a series of delays in deliveries that had initially been set for last year.
Broughton's staff of 1200 A380 workers was repeatedly scaled back, with hundreds reassigned to other Airbus types. At one point a skeleton crew of barely 100 was all that remained.
Some customers, such as Virgin, pushed back orders. Others, like parcels giant Fedex, which had wanted 10 A380 freight versions, cancelled altogether and opted for Boeing.
John Gillbanks, a former teenage apprentice who has risen up the ranks and now runs the A380 wing factory, said that with the plane finally ready to fly he was building up to a full production staff again.
"But," he said, smiling, "we almost lost our shirt."
Demand has rebounded - there are now more than 165 firm orders, with Virgin and BA the latest to come back on board. Still, industry analysts estimate that, with the loss in revenue and cost overruns due to the repeated delays, Airbus will have to sell an additional 350 or so to break even.
But the hope and expectation at Broughton last week was that, as with the old Boeing 747, the mere passenger impact of the new Superjumbo will make demand contagious.
When the project was launched, there was talk of everything from pool tables to fully fledged shopping areas, first-class showers and on-board casinos. The problem is that the economic and environmental claims for the A380 - whose per-passenger emission levels have been calculated to be the equivalent of an ordinary car - all hinge on devoting most of the space to economy-class passengers.
The Singapore Airlines version has about 400 economy seats, 60 super-wide business-class places and 12 "first class-plus" suites with sliding doors, work tables and flat-screen TVs.
Still, Gillbanks caught the mood inside Airbus and beyond last week when he said such issues would be worked out as more airlines took delivery of the planes.
"I've worked on all sorts and sizes of planes. And when you are close to these things, you sometimes forget the big picture. But I watched as the first A380 was handed over for the flight to Singapore and I couldn't help thinking that it is simply an amazing aircraft."
- Observer
