MARCH 2007 – The biggest plane on Earth, the Airbus A380, visited Munich, Germany, on 28th March. The five hour stopover ended Lufthansa’s first phase of real life tests of the plane. The plane with the French registration F-WWJB landed safely in Munich at 12:36 MEST in front of the press, admired by thousands of spectators around the Munich airport who tried to catch a glimpse of the new plane. Lufthansa plans to take up the first scheduled flights with the A380 in 2009 from Frankfurt only, so it will be some time until the plane will be in Munich again. © Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com
The story behind the image
It’s an image from an entirely different time, seemingly from an ancient, long lost period. But it’s barely two decades ago that the brand new Airbus A380 visited Munich’s airport Franz Josef Strauß. A good crowd had gathered for the event, and many fellow photographers and journalists had come to capture the moment, and you could sense a certain excitement everywhere. This would be the future! Sure, there were some concerns over the ecological footprint of this massive airplane. What’s more, the need for special gangways at the airport was criticized. Yet, the Europeans were genuinely proud to have this plane – the biggest plane ever built (at that time).
But sentiment changed only few years after. Orders for the plane were not coming in as planned, because the travel behaviour had begun to change, and so in February 2019, Airbus announced that it would discountinue production of the A380. And so, the last A380 was delivered to Emirates on 16th December 2021. From excitement to end-of-life in just 15 years. Wow.
Wikipedia has an excellent article on the history of the A380.
Design ideas
The high resolution image
| Capture Date & Time | 28-MAR-2007, 12:36 |
| Location | Munich, Germany |
| Camera | Canon EOS-1D Mark II N |
| Lens | Canon EF70-200mm f/2.8L USM |
| ISO | 200 |
| Exposure | 1/8000 sec at f/2.8 |
| Digital Image Source Format | Canon Camera RAW (CR2) |
| Edited Image Format | JPEG, 24 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Dimensions | 3504 x 2336 Pixels |
| Copyright | © by Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com |
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