During a recent conference, the participants have been invited to visit the Airbus site in Toulouse. I took my camera with, in flight and at the conference, to learn when entering the site that taking pictures there is not allowed. Damn!

The visit starts with a replica of the telemetry room used during the test flights. The aircraft under test (in our case an A380) transmits a lot of data to a reception network covering all of France and nothern Spain. The data sent are the dream of any aircraft incident investigator: almost all flight and system parameters plus live audio and video from the cockpit under various angles. For visitors, the replica of the room is fed with data from the Airbus 380 maiden flight. We can hear the crew discussions (in French, naturellement) and we learn that shortly before take-off the flight engineer lost one of his pens. Because of his flight suit, parachute and helmet (mandatory for the first series of flights) he can’t pick it up, but as it’s in sight, it’s not a hazard for the flight. Never loose a pen in a cockpit before a flight…

The screens reproduce all the system and flight parameters. We can see the power rising on the four engines. The flight engineer gives his go and aircraft starts to roll. The telemetry screens reproduce the flight instruments, we see airspeed increasing. The co-pilot calls “V1″ and “Rotate” almost at the same time, and the biggest airliner in the world leaves the ground… There’s magic in the air. One of the first remarks of the Captain is typical of the impact of technology on aircraft design: “Comme au simu”, “like in the simulator”. The crew had so much simulator sessions before the maiden flight that it made it look extremely usual.

One of the screens shows a 3D model of the aircraft in flight. High-technology? No, a good old Microsoft Flight Simulator fed with live data from the aircraft. For the rest of the demonstration, we see pictures and data of flight number 56. At this stage the crew no longer needs the survival suite, the parachutes and the helmets. This is a fascinating flight with a lot of stalls. As the pilot pull the nose up, the flight engineer periodically announces the value of the angle of attack, up to 22 degrees. A good review of aerodynamics. The instruments on the screen show both the pitch and the angle of attack, and the difference is clearly visible. I never had the opportunity to see this kind of aircraft stalling before. As for modern light aircraft, it’s totally unimpressive. No abrupt reaction, no spin, nothing.

I missed my camera during this part of the visit, but much more during the second part. We took a bus to the assembly halls. There’s not a lot of references nearby so it’s hard to realize how big these buildings are. Visitors are not allowed inside the halls themselves but there is kind of a gallery, dominating one of the halls. From there we could see three A380’s being assembled. Here again, the lack of references makes hard to evaluate how big they are. A three (was it four?) story assembly of offices in containers by the nose was almost at cockpit height.

The people moving around looked so tiny… There was also a kind of golf-cart which looked like an abandonned toy. There was no A320 in the hangar but our guide explained us how to build one. Take an A380 engine – it’s as wide as an A320 fuselage. Put the tailplane on the A380 on top, it’s as wide as an A320 wing. By the way, the engines are the last step of the assembly, because the supplier wants to be paid on delivery, and they represent almost a third of the price.

After the hangar we visted a full-scale “model” of the cabin with economy and business class fittings. No private suite for this mock-up but two bars, some room to walk freely, emergency exit doors… and a couple of jumpseat for the flight attendants. The same old jumpseats that already equip the A320 family. I sincerely hope for all flight attendants that will work in the biggest airliner in the world that they’ll get a bit more room and comfort.

The airbus visit shop in the end was full of goodies. Well, before we bought everything: ties, caps, mugs, tee-shirts, pens, umbrellas, notepads, keyrings, plush aircrafts, stickers, magnets, models, books, DVDs, … I don’t even dare to say how much money I spent there. Anyway, a great thank you to the conference’s organizators and to the visit crew at Airbus. If you’re once in the vicinity, this visit is definitely a must.