Today, Singapore Airlines enters a new era in long-haul air travel, with the formal handover of the world's first A380 at Airbus headquarters in southern France.
The handover took place at the Henri Ziegler Delivery Centre, Toulouse, at a ceremony attended by over 500 people, and officiated by Chief Executive Officers Tom Enders (Airbus), Sir John Rose (Rolls-Royce) and Chew Choon Seng (Singapore Airlines).
The first delivery marks the culmination of an engineering project unrivalled in the aerospace industry. The A380 is the largest passenger plane ever built and the first completely new design of a passenger aircraft in decades.
Components have been built in plants around the world before being brought together for assembly at key Airbus facilities in Europe. Final assembly took place in Toulouse, France, while the painting of the livery and installation of the aircraft cabin took place in Hamburg, Germany.
