Covering the Coverage

This was what they call a media event. The best mainstream media may have been Richard Quest's CNN stuff. The man is as entertaining in person as he is on TV. But for the rest of us, the best coverage may be the fan sites, the best of which has got to be www.sq380.net, sort of a perpetual virtual first flight shrine set up by Tim Goodwin and Ian Spahr, a couple of flight buffs from Australia. Its intro page is graced with a beefy photo of the A380, almost snorting and pawing the runway as it lifts off from Changi Airport. And inside is a seat map with info on all the passengers, including Yours Truly, in 54H.

Now you can relive the whole flight -- along with me

I've posted a wrap-up video on youtube that's pretty much the ultimate story of this amazing trip, from start to finish, with commentary. Enjoy.

Oh, My Darling

Here's a bit of a left turn: I had dinner with some miners last night. That's right, miners, as in bauxite miners. Alcoa miners who work in the Darling Range of Western Australia, one of the world's richest and largest deposits of bauxite, the ore from which we get aluminum.

So I found myself tagging along at a dinner meeting with some of Alcoa's (actually the world's) best authorities on mining and refining bauxite, and on reclaiming land and restoring biodiversity in Australia's unique and fragile ecosystem (see the photo). Naturally, the question came up, did the A380 come from here?

Aluminum doesn't grow on trees. It doesn't fall from the sky. It either comes from recycled aluminum or it comes from the ground. And if it's Alcoa aluminum, there are just a few places in the world it could come from: West Africa, Suriname, Jamaica, Brazil, or here, the Darling Range. Alcoa's system of mines, refineries and smelters is big and vast, and it's not always easy to trace a particular piece of metal back to its origin. But still, we figured there's a strong possibility that some of the A380's aluminum is from the Darling range.

I liked the poetry of this: that my historic plane ride could have circled back and ended in the very spot on Earth that the A380's elemental parts were born.

Just how cushy? Readers want to know

Mike C of Round Rock, Texas writes:

"My son wants to know if the seats are more comfortable. What's your opinion?"

Mike: Tell your son that the A380's seats, even in coach, are indeed more comfortable than what you're used to. I asked Singapore Air that same question and they told me that there are a couple of big improvements: first, the seats are spaced a little farther apart to add some legroom. Second, when you recline the seatback, the seat bottom slides forward. This gives you some extra back comfort. And there's a third improvement that your son especially will find cool: the video screen is much, much bigger. So all your movies and online games will be more fun. If you're lucky enough to get an exit row (see the photo) you'll find your self with more leg room and space than you know what to do with. My advice? Pack a poker table and get social.

That's just the economy section. In the Singapore Airlines A380, Business Class and 'Suite' First Class are a whole different proposition. When you walk into the Business Class section, you'll feel a little like you're back in the office. That's because the business class seats are so high-walled that they have the private feeling of office cubicles. But no cube farm at Alcoa was ever set up like this, with large roomy leather wrapped seats, mini-desks with great computer and video hookups, and of course the ability to fold flat into beds for long-range travel.

And Suites Class is indeed what the name implies -- separate little cabins with single or double beds for the ultimate in comfort and luxury.

Film at 11

I've posted some video clips from the flight on YouTube. Here's a link to the playlist. Alcoans who want to see these may have to view them from home, depending on firewall security. We will post these inside the system soon.

One thing I realized after watching these videos over again: the people from Singapore Airlines, from the gregarious Chairman Seng on down to the steward who sat opposite us in the jump seat, looked and acted like they were having fun doing this.

Yet they had to be going through the service scenario from hell: they couldn't get their carts through the aisles because of the non-stop Mardi Gras. They hadn't had 'live' training on the A380 for cabin service. And, like any great party, everybody was hanging out in the kitchens! My hat's off to them for smiling, heck, laughing their way through one of the most high-pressure events of their careers, doing an incredible job, with international network news cams all over them. A truly amazing group.

The Big event

Well, now I know. There are no bowling alleys. No pool tables. If there was a cocktail bar, I was unable to find it. Just lots and lots of airplane enthusiasts packed into the freshly appointed cabin of an incredible aircraft. Four hundred seventy one of us, cheek by jowl with what seemed like half again as many media people. The area in front of my exit row seat served as a studio for news crews ranging from CNN to a Swiss air buff blog. The media frenzy was so intense that the overworked and ever-smiling service staff almost didn't make the second serving -- a delicious nasi goreng satay served over cold spicy buckwheat noodles. But it didn't matter, nobody was hungry by that time. For six brief hours, this planeload of people became a community talking about just one thing: this revolutionary aircraft and its impact on the future of travel.

We got to pose with celebrities too, including the chairman of SIA Chew Choon Seng (above).

How Big is it, anyway?

I'm filing one more post before the Big Event tomorrow morning. And it has to be the one about Big-ness.

There are few aircraft in history that have an edge in size over the A380. One is the so-called Hughes H-4 Hercules "Spruce Goose" built during World War II. It’s a little wider than the A380. It has the distinction not only of being huge, but also being built entirely out of plywood.
The other record holder is the Soviet Antonov An-225 designed during the Cold War to a) be bigger and more intimidating than any puny American aircraft and b) if that’s not intimidating enough, to carry spacecraft on its back. The AN-225 is both longer and wider than the A380.

Only one of each of these monsters was ever built, which makes the A380 a different proposition altogether. For one thing, neither of these aircraft had individual gaming consoles. And for another, there will be hundreds of A380s plying the skies soon.

If you want to wallow in statistical superlatives, you can visit the Airbus web site, which has all the best data; or the Singapore Airlines site, where you’ll discover that if you stack five giraffes on top of each other, they won’t quite reach the top of the A380’s massive tailfin.

I have asked Singapore Airlines if we’ll be able to see this demonstration live on the tarmac when we board the plane. Fingers crossed.

World's longest red-eye?

SQ21, the 18-hour flight from Newark to Singapore has to be one of the world's longest, or in the top 5 at least. And this one, leaving at 11 pm and heading over the Pole, is dark all the way.

For people like me who don't fly all the time, it's still an amazing trip. You dine at midnight, then head north until north turns into south. You watch yourself cross Siberia, Mongolia and Tibet on an animated map right out of Indiana Jones. You read the in-flight mag with its intriguing cover story (left), watch about 75 in-flight movies, figure out how to work the sleeper seat, and sleep.

Our Airbus A340-500 was so roomy, smooth and comfortable that I found myself asking, how can the A380 plus this?

Tomorrow, I will let you know.

Before it can fly, it has to walk

This will be my last post for a while. I'm at Newark International, boarding SQ21 (an A340, I think) for Singapore in a little while, and will be in the air for 18 hours -- presumably away from Internet access. As my connecting flight from Pittsburgh descended into Newark a little while ago, I looked down at all the rows of gleaming white wings lined up along the concourses and was reminded of a conversation I had today with John Riches, a friend of mine at Alcoa's Davenport Works in Davenport, Iowa, USA.

The plant where John works as communications officer rolls the A380's mighty wing plates, the biggest, longest aluminum wing plates ever made, anywhere. What's the most interesting thing about these plates? It's not that they're the biggest. Davenport is used to that. It's how they make the journey from Davenport to Broughton, UK, where the wings are built. "Airbus sends us a specially built trailer for the wings," John told me. "We load them on the trailer, they get trucked to a terminal in New Jersey and shipped overseas, trailer and all." The cool thing is, the trailer is so long, it has extra steering -- in the back, like a big-city hook-and-ladder firetruck. That's so that once it gets to the UK and is hitched up to a truck over there, it can negotiate the tight turns and roundabouts of European roadways. "They unload it, move it to the assembly point, then ship the empty trailer back to us for another load."

John said he'd see if he could find a couple of photos of the amazing plant where these plates are made. I'll post them here when I can. In the meantime check out the by-now famous A380 Assembly video. It's pretty amazing.

On the 'A' list

My first souvenir arrived over the weekend: a hand-written invitation to the boarding gala. There will be speeches, a charity presentation, and hopefully shrimp. Perhaps coffee too, as this takes place 6 am Singapore time. Singapore Airlines did a cool thing. Knowing this would be a hotter ticket than Hannah Montana, they put the ticket sales on e-Bay back in September and donated the proceeds to 3 charities - one in Singapore, one in Sydney and one international (Doctors Without Borders.) A class act all the way.

A test flight on the double decker 'Bus

One of my favorite A380 videos so far is one from Youtube, shot by a couple of Airbus employees flying one of the first test flights from Frankfurt to New York. You can see the excitement and pride on their faces. Make sure you catch the bathroom tour -- featuring state-of-the-art, no-slam toilet seats. Not everything has to have aluminum in it to be cool!

Flying through history

I'm not used to being a part of aviation history -- at least not personally, strapped into the seat of a first flight. But that's a pretty normal thing for Alcoa. The history of modern aviation is pretty much the history of aluminum. And the history of aluminum, well, that's the history of Alcoa.
Take the Wright Brothers. We tell this story so often that it sounds like a legend, but it's true. Though the plane was canvas and wood, the engine was made of metal. And the only metal that could get it off the ground was aluminum, supplied by one of our customers in Ohio. Aluminum was less than ten years old when that happened. It's just a little over a hundred years between that historic event and this one.

For your A380 playlist

You have one, of course? Be sure to put the official A380 Song on your iPod. I'm hoping Diva Agata is on board next week so I can volunteer in person for the 800-person A380 music video. Check it out!

That new plane smell

Today, in Toulouse, France, Singapore Airlines took delivery of the plane. My plane. The Airbus A380 that I'll be flying on next week, representing Alcoa on the world's first commercial flight. I and 550 other privileged flight pioneers will get to spend five hours inside what looks, from the pictures, for all the world like a flying cruise ship.

People have paid as much as a hundred grand for this experience. They're looking forward, I'm sure, to the fabled Singapore Airlines flight experience: the extensive wine cellar; the right cheese at the right time; the unobtrusive yet ever-present cabin service, and the rest.

Me, I'll be looking at the seat tracks.

My friend Cindie Giummara at Alcoa Technical Center said I ought to check them out if I want to see a cool application of Alloy 2099; a special aluminum-lithium cocktail designed by Alcoa to make aluminum even lighter and stronger than it already is. Cindie, by the way, is from Australia, where I'll be flying to. She and I are currently not speaking due to the fact that I'm making this trip instead of her. A shout out to you, mate.

As Cindie explained to me, if you leave lithium alone in open air, it explodes. But if, under exotic high-tech manufacturing conditions that include an argon-charged casting chamber, you alloy white-hot lithium with good ol' Alcoa aluminum in the right proportions, you get the kind of stuff they make jet fighters out of. And, for Airbus, the kind of stuff that can deliver critical strength and shave precious pounds off a superjumbo where it matters most.

So why use it for the seat tracks? I expect because there are probably several hundred miles of them in the A380 (note to fact checkers -- check this fact). Whatever. With 8 to 11 rows of seats for up to 550 passengers plus crew, you wind up with a lot of track. And it has to be strong because, hey, who likes a loose seat when you're flying through a thunderstorm?

So while everybody else is looking to get autographs signed and be first in line at the bar, that'll be me down on my hands and knees, peeling up the carpet.