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British Airways A380: What you need to know

10 Nov 2015 by GrahamSmith
British Airways A380

British Airways took delivery of its first A380 at London Heathrow in July 2013.

The carrier has since received another 11 superjumbos from Airbus and so now has a total of 12.

British AIrways first rostered the A380 onto its Los Angeles route in September 2013, and now flies the aircraft twice daily to LAX; daily to Washington DC, Miami, Hong Kong and Johannesburg; five-times weekly to San Francisco; and three-times weekly to Singapore.

BA plans to fly the superjumbo daily to both Singapore from February and Vanouver from May.

The layout of BA’s A380 features 14 seats in First on the main deck, followed by 44 Club World seats in a 2-4-2 configuration, then 199 World Traveller seats in a 3-4-3 layout. To view a seatplan, click here or see below.

The upper deck has a further 53 Club World seats in a 2-3-2 layout, followed by 55 World Traveller Plus seats also configured 2-3-2, and then 104 World Traveller seats in a 2-4-2 layout.

The first A380 aircraft painted in BA’s livery exited the Airbus paint hangar in Hamburg in April 2013, ahead of its delivery that July. To read Business Traveller‘s coverage of the Heathrow delivery, click here.

MSN95 took two weeks to be painted in the airline’s red, white and blue colours, with 24 workers applying 2,300 litres of paint across 3,500 sqm of surface. The tailfin alone features 10,000 black and white dots.

The work was carried out using spray guns, traditional paint rollers and paint brushes, with a total of five coats being applied. The paint adds around 650kg to the weight of the aircraft, but is no thicker than a human hair.

BA was Airbus’ tenth customer and its first aircraft was the 106th A380 delivered.

In 2012, Business Traveller attended an event in France to watch BA’s A380 parts travelling in convoy to the Airbus final assembly line in Toulouse (see news, October 2012).

And to watch a slideshow, click here.

ba.com

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