Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Tuesday the 30th of May and thank you for tuning in. Today I'm going to talk about the Airbus A380. The reason for that is, as you may have read in the independent, a new airline is planning to operate transatlantic

flights from London to both New York and Los Angeles next spring. This is a company called

Global Airlines and they say they've just bought their first Airbus A380.

This, of course, is the world's biggest passenger jet. It can, in its maximum configuration, hold over 850 people.

But generally it tends to be between about 470 and 600 people on board, depending on just how many posh seats there are, and in case, in the case of Emirates, how many showers there are for first-class passengers.

It's a plane that generally passengers, including me, love. It's got a real sense of space. It's got an upstairs and a

downstairs, like the Boeing 747 jumbo jet, which is now more or less extinct. But the difference with

the A380 is that the upper deck extends all the way through the length of the plane

and I'm particularly happy on the upper deck towards the back which on some configurations

is where airlines put economy seats so that's where you will find me it's there's about

300 that have ever been made and pretty much half of those are

operated by Emirates. It has a business model like no other airline. Clearly it goes through the

world's busiest intercontinental hub, which is Dubai and the idea very simply, we think we can fill this aircraft,

even when it's flying in from Glasgow to Dubai because there's so many collections that we offer.

We've got so much capacity. And that is all thanks to Airbus A380s. It's also the only aircraft that Emirates runs to London Heathrow,

and that's to maximise the value of their slots. And gosh, I've been at Terminal 3. I spent

quite a lot of time there on Friday actually looking out the window because my British Airways

flight was cancelled and then the next one was delayed and I could see the Emirates A380s come and go very very efficient operation and it just means that they can they can carry 3,000 passengers a day each way in and out of Heathrow.

And, well, what's not to love about an Airbus A380?

If you go to, as I have, and I recommend it, Lourd Airport in southwest France,

yes, serving the well-known pilgrimage site, you will, if you go for a walk around,

which I have and I recommend, you'll discover that this is an aviation graveyard, plane after,

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