The Beast Has Arrived
For you true airline geeks out there, yesterday and today are big days. The Beast, aka the Airbus A380 made its first arrival in the U.S. yesterday at New York, Dulles and Los Angeles. Today -- it has just touched down in Chicago.
I'm sure you've seen plenty of the pictures and/or seen videos of its various arrivals.
Interesting thing about the Beast. In talking to a couple of pilots who have seen data from the aircraft's proving runs, and after reading a report from a team of pilots working the initial runs, it appears that the aircraft is surprisingly nimble. And powerful. Not beastly or sloth-like at all in the way it can perform emergency actions or avoidance maneuvers. Bottomline seems to be that the aircraft is surprisingly agile.
Cool. I certainly hope I get the chance to fly on one at some point.