My first flight by Emirates ‘A 380’ - world’s largest commercial ‘double decker’ superjumbo jet!!

Last year we (my wife and me) had a surprise invitation to Dubai from our Daughter’s (an architect working in Atlanta) company to see their prestigious projects at Dubai, where my daughter played an important role and won the award “First woman to win an International contract from Atlanta outside USA!” (Photo of my daughter and me with the model attached)

So we thought of combining our trip to USA via Dubai by Emirates.

After spending about 5 months in USA (May’08 to September’08) with our children and grand children we prepared our return trip to India.

We took Delta Airlines from Pittsburgh to New York and Emirates to Chennai with change of aircraft at Dubai.

When we reached Emirates Gate at New York, we saw big notice “Today we are using our new aircraft ‘A380’ – (photo attached) worlds largest commercial passenger aircraft – a double decker – with 820 passengers and 58 crew members...it’s a non-stop flight of 14 hours to Dubai.

I quickly opened my laptop, connected to the Internet and tried to find more about ‘A380’

Fortunately or unfortunately I came across the following while surfing:

1.Thirty-three people were injured during a test of the Airbus A380, a double decker superjumbo jet, in Hamburg, Germany. Injuries include friction burns from sliding down the escape ramps and one broken leg. 853 volunteer "passengers" and 20 crew members took about 80 seconds to evacuate the aircraft, beating the test's requirements by 10 seconds and over 200 people "rescued". Only eight of the plane's sixteen exits were used, as required by the test; the crew members were not told in advance which doors would open. The test was carried out in a dark hangar and the plane's aisles were littered with debris to simulate actual emergency conditions.

2.The issue of the electrical harnesses of A380, is extremely complex, with 530km of cables, 100,000 wires, and 40,300 connectors. It is twice as complex as for our next largest aircraft, the A340-600! And the depth of the problem was not fully understood in June. The full analysis over these past weeks has revealed it is much worse than expected.

Out of 8 doors to enter the double-deck aircraft, only 6 were functional and managed got to our seats. The flight took-off...so smooth, and within few minutes the Pilot announced that we have reached an altitude of 55,000 feet! I understand normally we fly at the altitude off around 32,000 feet.

I started fiddling with gadgets in front of my seat...about 4500 channels to listen and watch, live world news updated at every 5 mts a 360 deg. camera to view the entire inside and outside of the aircraft. Finally I plugged my 32 GB USB Pen drive and started watching as PPT all the photos taken during our trip...about 4000! and listening to my favorite music channel!When the time reached to land, the giant could not come down to 30,000 ft from 55,000 as the pilot could not get clearance, the actual position of the aircraft in the screen showed it had overshoot Dubai and circling near Mumbai!!. We could see so many birds (aircrafts!) flying far below our aircraft!!To cut short the DP, finally we landed safe. It's a great experience!