Dulles Hoping to See A380 Service by 2010
Officials at Washington Dulles International Airport say they could begin receiving regular calls from the world’s largest passenger airliner within about 18 months.
“We have had conversations with Air France about having the [Airbus] A380 at Dulles in 2010, but there is no schedule announcement from Air France yet,” said Tara Hamilton, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which runs Dulles and Ronald Reagan Washington National airports.
Dulles officials have long been preparing for the arrival of the A380, which can seat more than 500 passengers on two decks, surpassing the passenger capability of the venerable Boeing 747.
Air France has ordered a dozen A380 aircraft, with several additional options. The first delivery of the aircraft is slated to begin later this year. The airline, which has operated a large fleet of 747s, plans to phase out that aircraft, replacing it with A380s and Boeing 777s by 2012.
Currently, Air France flies one daily flight and one four-days-per-week flight between Dulles and Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, using 777s. In the 12 months ending in December, it carried 364,000 passengers through Dulles.
The 3,900-mile trip from Washington to Paris will be a snap for the A380, which has a maximum range of more than twice that distance.
From the early planning stages, both Air France and Lufthansa were seen as possible operators of the superjumbos at Dulles. Lufthansa has ordered 15 A380s, and expects to begin its operation of the aircraft by the end of the year. It has not announced any plans to serve Dulles.
In March 2007, Airbus brought an A380 to Dulles to showcase it to airport officials and the media. No U.S. airlines have yet ordered the aircraft for passenger service.
http://www.sungazette.net/articles/2009/01/28/fairfax/news/fe990.txt
I fly out of Dulles (IAD) and am not looking forward to this.
A bunch of 380’s arrive at the same time (or nearly so) and the zoo that is passport control becomes a huge, nasty, hours long nightmare because you can bet the CBP is not planning anymore hires to help process all those extra passengers. Also, the scheduling mess that follows is something no one has considered; i.e., connections from arriving international flights can be close, and now with the impending clog in passport control, this means a lot more missed connections and/or slipping of connection flights, meaning lost time and increased cost.
Yuck.