This morning (*early* this morning), we took a tour of the Airbus A380 program - in French! While I didn't absorb everything, it was still pretty interesting.
It lasted an hour and a half, and consisted of three parts - an overview with telemetry during the test flights, a view of the factory floor where the planes are assembled, and a walk-through of a section of the passenger area. We also got to see a mock-up of the cockpit of the A320.
Interestingly, just the day before, Airbus was in the news - they had just won a *huge* contract to supply Air Asia with 200 planes. Earlier in the week, government officials were pressuring Air France to buy their planes only from Airbus, in the name of "economic patriotism."
Details:
- We had to order our tour at least 2 weeks in advance, so we did that when we first got to Toulouse.
- Our tour started at 9 am, but we were required to be there by 8:30 for check-in.
- From our hotel, to get to the Airbus plant, we first walked to the train station (5 minutes), then took the Metro across town (10 minutes), then took the tramway (light rail) to the nearest stop (30 minutes), then walked (20 minutes). We gave ourselves and hour and a half, and we got there 10 minutes early :-)
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