KEY POINTS:
Aucklanders will get a quick look at the biggest aircraft to visit the city when Qantas shows off its new Airbus A380 next month.
The plane will arrive late at night on Thursday, October 9, and will be on display the next day at Auckland Airport. It will then fly around the city for just over an hour from 10am.
The Australian airline has no plans to operate scheduled A380 flights to New Zealand but will use the visit as part of an exercise to test alternative airports, needed if flights have to be diverted.
The visit will also mark the opening of Auckland Airport's new pier and airbridges capable of handling the superjumbos, which Emirates Airline is on track to fly daily across the Tasman starting from next February.
The A380 is not the most elegant plane, but it is huge, able to carry up to 853 passengers, compared to 524 in the decades-old long-haul workhorse, the Boeing 747.
Qantas' executive general manager, John Borghetti said that as well as the size of the aircraft, its quietness was an outstanding feature.
The A380 uses far less fuel than older comparable aircraft it has been claimed to make 12 per cent to 20 per cent savings for full aircraft.
The wing area is 845sq m (average houses are about 150sq m) and the huge volume of air beneath the wings makes for soft takeoffs and landings.
Mr Borghetti said the plane was transforming airlines.
"Economically there's a transformation, and from a product perspective and passenger comfort it's revolutionary."
For Qantas the arrival of the A380 has been a welcome diversion from a barrage of bad publicity this year which started with an exploding oxygen cylinder in a 747 and continued with a string of minor incidents.
By the end of the year, 14 A380s will be flying after years of delays at Airbus, a European consortium.
Singapore Airlines, which was the first to fly the plane late last year, has clocked up more than 1000 flights.
On the Singapore-Sydney route, the A380 has on average been 90 per cent full, a significant increase over previous aircraft, said Looi Tein Po, manager of Singapore Airlines NZ.
Emirates got its first A380 in late July which is flying the Dubai-New York route two to three times a week.
"It's full because people are saying they want to get on that aircraft," said Emirates president of group services Gary Chapman.
Air New Zealand opted for the smaller, higher tech Boeing 787 Dreamliner which promises to be even more fuel efficient and fly longer distances but will not be delivered to the airline until 2012.
Huge Soviet era Antonov 124-100 freighters have flown to Auckland, notably to transport America's Cup boats, but are shorter with a smaller wingspan and wing area than the A380. The newer Antonov 225 heavy-lifter is the biggest plane in the world but Auckland Airport says it has not flown here.
