A380 A Love Story

This is the first time I have ever sat on the tarmac, before a 13 hour flight and wondered; "Will i have time to do everything i want to … ?".

As things stand right now, it looks like i'm going to miss my connecting flight to Inverness and have to spend the day in London … a city i hate with a fiery passion. However all i can say is that it will totally be worth it (both the hassle and expense), to have flown on the A380. As a passenger in Economy, it looks just like any other wide-body plane (747, 767, 777, A330 etc), but the modern details really make all the difference.

Let me count the ways I love you:

1. You have carbon fibre seats. Not carbon fibre effect, but real honest-to-god; 'these things are like a race car', carbon fibre seats.

2. You have the best entertainment system in the world:

a. It is a massive, high resolution, touch screen.

b. There are literally 101 (probably more) movies to watch.

c. There are more CD's and radio stations than i can count.

d. There is a whole business section, with audio books, news and even training by DeLoitte.

e. The map of the GPS location of the plane is interactive, it's like Google Earth, you can wander wherever you want.

f. There is a live camera from the top of the frickin' tail. Ok not hugely useful right now at night (black, black, more black), but in the day it would be awesome.

3. You have wifi/ethernet for e-mail and IM, sure its not full web access, but still damn useful.

4. You have power for my laptop (though not working right now) and my iPod (USB plug in the armrest). So i can actually use both of those things for the full flight, rather than having to try to ration the battery life.

Sure, i might not be feeling so euphoric about the whole situation, if there was someone reclining on me in-front and i was wedged between 2 people (Economy seats are still the same size). We'll also see how traumatic and slow the deplaning of 450 people is. But damn, i have been spoiled for every other plane i fly on from now on, at least until the 787 arrives, maybe longer.

Sadly despite being awesome plane, it doesn't make airline food any better ;-)