Heads of government from France, Germany, Spain and the UK will gather in a hangar near Toulouse, France, on 18 January to inspect the first complete airframe of the Airbus A380 double-decker 鈥渟uperjumbo鈥� jet. Patents recently filed by Airbus give some clues as to what features might be built into the gargantuan 555 to 800-seat plane, due to go into service in 2006.
World patent application WO 2004/018290 shows the layout of the main passenger cabins, with reclining seats arranged in groups of four on either side of the aisles. The four seats in each group are back-to-back, so half the passengers will be flying backwards.
Some variants of the A380 will have cabin modules like mini hotel rooms, in which individual passengers or families will have their own four walls, an armchair, a pull-down bed, a TV and entertainment system, and a wash basin (WO 2004/009442). Children will be kept happy during long-haul flights by a 鈥減lay container鈥� which opens out to form a climbing frame with a ladder, slide and soft-landing mat (WO 2004/078301).
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Ground staff will continually monitor the A380鈥檚 airframe for defects by 鈥渓istening鈥� to how the structure behaves in a varying magnetic field (WO 2004/018985). Electromagnets will apply a slowly increasing field to the structural metal beams, while a coil picks up the audio-frequency 鈥渃rackles鈥� created by the material鈥檚 magnetic domains as they align with the field. The pattern for the 鈥渧irgin鈥� structure will be recorded and stored before the plane goes into service, to be used as a reference for future checks.
Airbus has also been thinking about people under the flight path. Tests showed that a lot of the noise heard near airports is caused by cavities in the landing gear acting as resonant chambers, like organ pipes (US 2003/0102406). Full-enclosure fairings stop the noise, but also make safety inspection difficult. Airbus has found that carefully placed deflectors that steer air round the offending chambers are just as effective but cause less obstruction.
