June 22 was a memorable day for Vienna International Airport: Emirates Airline’s 80th wide body A380 aircraft landed in Vienna. The aircraft arrived in Austria’s capital directly from the Airbus production facility in Hamburg
This special visit by Emirates’ 80th A380, captained by Austrian national Florian Ragg, was the final stage in the process of preparing regular reoperations starting July 1. During the stay technical procedures were tested: movement of the aircraft into its correct parking position, docking procedures to the Pier East, loading of catering and baggage and cabin cleaning procedures. To provide a large enough space for docking and handling of this wide body aircraft four airport gates will be merged into one.
Emirates has served the Vienna-Dubai route since 2004. Tourism in Austria, as well as directly or indirectly linked industries such as trade, transport and infrastructure will benefit from the introduction of the A380. Emirates’ 14 weekly frequencies support close to 1,800 full-time jobs in Austria, generating economic impact on the national GDP worth approximately EUR 179 million a year (according to a study by Frontier Economics Ltd. In 2015)
10 facts on Emirates’ A380:
- Each A380 consists of around 4 million individual components produced by 1500 companies from 30 countries around the world.
- 19.000 bolts are inserted inside the fuselage to attach the three main parts, plus 4.000 to attach the wings.
- Each A380 is equipped with 500 km of electric cables.
- The volume of the three decks (including cargo/baggage hold) comprises 1,570 m³ – this would be enough space for 35 million ping-pong balls.
- The two passenger decks of the A380 have a total size of 550 m² , the same size as three tennis courts or 1¼ basketball courts.
- The aircraft has 220 windows.
- During take-off the wings can flex upwards by over 4 m.
- The weight of the external paint of the A380 (topcoat plus primer) is 531 kg.
- The 127 tons of take-off thrust across the wings is the horsepower equivalent of around 2,500 family cars (at 110 hp each).
- The engine’s fan blades with a diameter of about 3 meters suck in 1 ¼ tons of air every second.
