Airbus

Airbus SAS (/ˈɛərbʌs/, French: [ɛʁbys], German: [ˈɛːɐbʊs], Spanish: [ˈerβus]) is a division of Airbus Group SE that manufactures civil aircraft. It is based in Blagnac, France, a suburb of Toulouse, with production and manufacturing facilities mainly in France, Germany, Spain, China and the United Kingdom.

Airbus began as a consortium of aerospace manufacturers, Airbus Industrie. Consolidation of European defence and aerospace companies in 1999 and 2000 allowed the establishment of a simplified joint-stock company in 2001, owned by the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) (80%) and BAE Systems (20%). After a protracted sales process BAE sold its shareholding to EADS on 13 October 2006.

Airbus employs around 63,000 people at sixteen sites in four countries: France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. Final assembly production is based at Toulouse, France; Hamburg, Germany; Seville, Spain; and, since 2009 as a joint-venture, Tianjin, China. Airbus has subsidiaries in the United States, Japan and India.

Airbus A380

The Airbus A380 is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine jet airliner manufactured by the European aircraft company Airbus. It is the world's largest passenger airliner, and the airports at which it operates have upgraded facilities to accommodate it. It was initially named Airbus A3XX and designed to challenge Boeing's monopoly in the large-aircraft market. The A380 made its first flight on 27 April 2005 and entered commercial service in October 2007 with Singapore Airlines.

The A380's upper deck extends along the entire length of the fuselage, with a width equivalent to a wide-body aircraft. This gives the A380-800's cabin 550 square metres (5,920 sq ft) of usable floor space, 40% more than the next largest airliner, the Boeing 747-8, and provides seating for 525 people in a typical three-class configuration or up to 853 people in an all-economy class configuration. The A380-800 has a design range of 8,500 nautical miles (15,700 km), sufficient to fly nonstop from Dallas, USA to Sydney, Australia, and a cruising speed of Mach 0.85 (about 900 km/h, 560 mph or 490 kn at cruising altitude).

Boeing 747

The Boeing 747 is a wide-body commercial jet airliner and cargo aircraft, often referred to by its original nickname, Jumbo Jet, or Queen of the Skies. Its distinctive "hump" upper deck along the forward part of the aircraft makes it among the world's most recognizable aircraft, and it was the first wide-body produced. Manufactured by Boeing's Commercial Airplane unit in the United States, the original version of the 747 had two and a half times greater capacity than the Boeing 707, one of the common large commercial aircraft of the 1960s. First flown commercially in 1970, the 747 held the passenger capacity record for 37 years.

The four-engine 747 uses a double deck configuration for part of its length. It is available in passenger, freighter and other versions. Boeing designed the 747's hump-like upper deck to serve as a first class lounge or extra seating, and to allow the aircraft to be easily converted to a cargo carrier by removing seats and installing a front cargo door. Boeing did so because the company expected supersonic airliners (development of which was announced in the early 1960s) to render the 747 and other subsonic airliners obsolete, while the demand for subsonic cargo aircraft would be robust well into the future. The 747 was expected to become obsolete after 400 were sold, but it exceeded critics' expectations with production passing the 1,000 mark in 1993. By January 2016, 1,520 aircraft had been built, with 19 of the 747-8 variants remaining on order.