Holidays in Heck by P. J. O’Rourke

but three decks—the lowest devoted to luggage, freight, and crew rest facilities for long-range flights. The decks are contained in an oval cross section with a smooth, sailing ship curve. The wings sweep back at thirty-three degrees, almost into the shape of a jib, and the stabilizer fin is as wide and tall and rakishly set as a Cunard funnel. The A380 seemed nautical—more liner than airliner. No one ever quailed at the prospect of the
Queen Mary 2
’s carrying 720 passengers.
    â€œFive hundred and fifty-five,” Debra corrected.
    The A380—the only one flying at that time—taxied away, then turned and rolled in our direction. Now it did look like an airplane, carrying itself with dignity and tending a bit to embonpoint. It had none of the fashionable emaciation of the old 707, with its gaunt runway-model (as it were) looks. Nor did it have the DC-10’s scary putthe-engines-anywhere accessorizing style. Rather, the A380 had
ton
. (And tonnage.)
    â€œCan I get on a test ride?” I asked.
    â€œNo,” Debra said.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œInsurance,” Peter said.
    Insurance is not usually a romantic word, but think of death and all the other romantic things there are to be insured against. Maybe aviation hasn’t lost its glamour. The A380 rose decisively, and before I thought it would. A 747 needs a third of a mile more to take off. The A380 flew over our heads with a Brobdingnagian whisper. It makes half a 747’s noise. And then the A380 flew away, into a haze very similar to the haze projected on the windshield of the A380cockpit simulator. Let the haze stand for predictions about the future of travel. Will it ever be fun again?
    Anyway, building an A380 seemed like fun. Debra and Peter and I went to the production line. Surprise at the scale of the A380 was quieted by surprise at the scale of the place where three more of them were being built. I did not know there was so much indoors. The factory, Debra said, can be seen from space.
    Actually, the A380 is built all over Europe. This was the final-assembly plant. The plane arrives in seven pieces sounding like some provincial soup recipe: three slices of fuselage, two wings, a fin, and a tail. The parts come to Toulouse by way of ocean freighters, canal barges, road convoys, and Airbus’s whale-shaped and more than whale-sized Beluga transport plane. (Measured by cargo volume, the Beluga is even larger than the A380.) I particularly liked picturing whole wings and great cabin sections strapped to humble barges, bringing a bit of industrial reality (and swamped decks) to people taking those French canal-boat tours and trying to pretend that travel is fun.
    The constituent parts of an A380 are placed in a single enormous jig—a Jell-O mold with the miniature marshmallows, fruit slices, and nutmeats aligned by means of laser technology to degrees of precision that take a lot of zeros behind a variety of decimal points to express.
    Engineering miracles have always required genius, but the miraculousness has gotten to a point where comparable genius is needed to explain it. Fortunately, a genius showed us around the factory. This was Charles Champion, an Airbus executive vice president and the head of the A380 programsince the project was launched, nearly five years before. Champion has since been promoted to chief operating officer of Airbus. (And, after this was written, demoted again, for slowness in bringing the A380 to fruition.) But he is, first, an engineer. And he all but glowed with enjoyment of the A380’s engineering. For example, the A380’s wings are clad in an esoteric alloy, what an ordinary mechanical engineer would call “unobtainium.” The wing panels are up to 180 feet long and 9 feet wide, and in places they are onlyinch thick. They need to hold a “double curved aerodynamic shape.” The way to achieve this is with a twenty-four-hour application of varying temperatures and loads