Harish Palaniappan's

Super Jumbo is Airbus's 600 and odd seater aircraft..the A380.

It is the world's largest, so large that its wings had to be very huge. And Wings were so huge that they had to be inclined up at an angle to be away from the ground.. and also have landing gears in the wings to take on the weight during landing and take-off.

It was unveiled in a celebrated, popular, test flight way back in 2005.. Since then, there had been many many purchase orders for the multi-billion dollar aircraft (one even from Kingfisher Airlines in India for delivery in 2010).

Singapore airlines was the first to order, and Emirates Airlines placed the largest order. The first plane was expected to be delivered to Singapore Airlines in 2006, but technical difficulties and delays forced the Airbus directors atleast a couple of time to discuss and announce delays in delivery timelines.. off by atleast one year every time.

The delays have been majorly due to employee attrition, staff strikes, parts or technology inaccessibilities etc., which are all popularly attributed to have been triggered by competitor Boeing to ground the A380 project seeing risks in trade. and also ofcourse..due to politics within the airline industry.

Good news is:
Whatever happened so far.. it looks like the Super Jumbo will fly commercially before this year end. Singapore Airlines expects to operationalize the A380 from this October.

While the airports used by Singapore Airlines had already made broader runways, bigger turnaround space, and broader parking bays all setup back in 2005-2006,...
very recently, Airbus did a tour to Singapore and trained ground staff in the airports, to handle the super jumbo.

The super jumbo concept has from 2005 caught up with movies too.. popularly with the movie 'Flight Plan' whose story completely happens inside a 600 seater, 3 floor aircraft.

Also, India's most popular Software company Infosys has been a technology partner for the A380 project at Airbus, delivering key software and technology components that were involved in the aircraft's design and development.

Links:
1. You can catch up with my earlier post back in 2005 on A380 with photos.
2. A380 official site
3. Infosys's 2005 press release on its participation in the project
4. Infosys's case-study paper on the project