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This plane has been out for a while now so it doesn't really make the news anymore. But I flew on it for my first time today. Singapore to Paris on Singapore Airlines.
After years of flying on 30-year old 747's I was pretty curious what the next 30 years of flight might be like.
Sooo....
1. Although its basically a good-sized building with wings, inside it you don't get any sense of the scale. There's lots of sections that are curtained off, so really the feeling wasn't much different than a 747/777.
2. It's a very graceful plane. You barely notice take-offs, turbulence, and landings.
3. It's too quiet. This is not a good thing at all, to my surprise. Usually some noise-canceling headphones are able to silence all the low-frequency engine noise in regular planes. But on the A380, even with them on, you can hear someone coughing 5 rows back or a kid screaming 10 rows ahead of you. Shitty.
4. My new company unfortunately flies everyone in economy, so I'm not too sure how it compares to economy in older planes (mostly business class in the past). I'm pretty tall though (6'2") and there seemed to be a decent amount of leg room.
5. There are power plugs in economy class, which is one very nice thing (this used to be only available in business). Being able to sink 5 hours into a game of Civ4 without having to worry about your battery is definitely sexy.
All in all it's an impressive engineering feat getting something that big to fly, but there's very little sense that you've now stepped into a "next-generation" of air travel.
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sounds lovely. I am always scared of turbulence because of all those horror stories. bleh
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Northern Ireland22213 Posts
Power plugs in economy eh? Sounds good!
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Yeah i've heard that Paris-Singapore is with A380 now.
How much did it cost ?
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konadora
Singapore66366 Posts
You were in Singapore???
=((((((((
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Valhalla18444 Posts
he lives here
hows the speed compared to the 747s
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Osaka27180 Posts
Tbh, power is the thing that matters to me most. With it I can take care of my own entertainment, and probably my headphones will take care of the noise/lack of noise. Civ 4 is definitely the premium pan-pacific game haha.
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Northern Ireland22213 Posts
Yeah I won't care about whether I have personalised inflight entertainment, or if I have to share a screen with the other passengers 
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Im flying on this baby today out to singapore o/ Economy is still economy but at least I got a seat with leg room.
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Oh sweet a thread on a380 :D I'm planning to fly from Auckland to Sydney on the Emirates a380 around Jan next year and then to Melbourne to see Aus open (basically an excuse to fly on the a380 that leaves everyday to sydney lol). Been really excited about this airplane.
Power in economy sounds great! Does anyone know if that is only limited to the Singapore Airlines a380? Your comment about the quietness is really interesting. I didn't consider that you could hear disturbances better if the plane was more quiet.
Oh and if your laptop has wireless, do you have to disable that before your flight or anything so you don't own the plane when you turn your laptop on the plane?
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Some answers:
Price - I think the route I flew is around 1500-2000 SGD roundtrip all-inclusive. Like any flight though, that depends a lot on the day of the week / time of year you depart.
Power in Economy - Really not sure about that one. Generally speaking, the airline will order a custom-configured interior & feature-set from the manufacturer. Emirates is a decent airline though so maybe.
Speed - Similar to a 747 (~1k km/h). I don't know much about airplane manufacturing, but there are some kind of specific challenges to doing cost-efficient supersonic travel.
Singapore I've lived there two years already.
Wireless Yes, you're supposed to disable wireless. It's not going to be an insta-gib button against the airplane, but it's somehow bad - or so we're told.
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EPT
