April 28, 2005: Yesterday's maiden flight of the new Airbus A380 giant jumbo was a complete success, according to the pilots and engineers who were on the plane for its four hour flight. The A380 took off from Toulouse, France and headed out over the Atlantic, with most of the flight over water for safety reasons. Depending on its seating configuration, the giant plane will seat as many as 800 passengers. Its 80 meter wingspan is the reason why 60 airports around the world are undergoing expansion to accommodate the new jet, which is scheduled to be delivered to its first customer, Singapore Airlines, next year.

German media reported on the maiden flight with headlines like "Transatlantic air battle: 1 to 0 against the USA". 2004 was the second year in a row that Airbus Industries delivered more planes to customers than Boeing, allowing airline industry observers to claim that it is the world's largest airplane manufacturer.

Listening to Boeing's Vice-President R. Wade Cornelius, one might get the impression that Airbus is a Boeing partner. "We are very happy that Airbus has developed an airplane for this market," was Cornelius' comment to reporters. According to him, the A380 targets a small market but has high development costs. An earlier study made by Boeing predicted a loss of eight billion dollars for the life of the A380 market. Will the A380 turn out to be a flop like the Concorde? The Concorde was an engineering marvel but too expensive to fly.

Airbus is obviously confident that the A380 will be a success. The marketing plan for the A380 predicts revenues of 150 billion euro in the next 40 years, and the plane is supposed to turn a profit by 2008. There are already 154 firm orders for the A380, with another 15 orders on option. Yesterday's successful test flight was therefore an important sign for Airbus customers.

Boeing doesn't see itself as in direct competition with the Airbus A380. Instead of attemting to build an even larger jumbo jet, Boeing decided after the 9-11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington to market the 787 "Dreamliner", which is a fuel-efficient long range plane offering seating configurations for 200-300 passengers. Boeing and Airbus have different marketing strategies for big jets. Boeing believes that airlines will want fuel-efficient planes capable of flying long distances between various cities. The concept behind the A380, on the other hand, is the "hub" strategy: airlines will fly large numbers of passengers to their hubs, and then transport them further using connecting flights on smaller planes.

There definitely is a market for Boeing's concept. The company says it already has over 200 firm orders for the 787, which is scheduled to go into production next year and be delivered beginning in 2008. Airbus wants to counter the 787 with the A350, but development of the plane has been delayed. One of the reasons for the delay are objections by the U.S. government over governmental subsidies for Europe's airplane manufacturers, part of the ongoing trade friction between America and the European Union.

In any serious trade conflict over Airbus products, however, the U.S. has a trump card that no one talks about: General Electric engines are used on Airbus planes.