A giant amongst the clouds

The Airbus A380 is now officially in service.

It is quite simply a technical and engineering triumph.

On my trip to Vietnam earlier this year, I experienced the juxtaposition of flying on a Boeing 777 transpacific, only to connect to a tiny regional jet here in the United States. It was a great way to be reminded of the genuine enormity and complexity of modern commercial aviation. In our little Delta Connection plane, we actually taxied past the Korean Air jet that had brought us to San Francisco, and we were dwarfed, even by just one of the engines on that plane.

The A380 is on a scale, pretty much all it's own. Airbus and Singapore Airlines, as the launch customer, have raised the bar when it comes to moving an enourmous number of people in a single flight.

I look forward to flying on one in the future.

Aircraft innovation is key as our world grows smaller and smaller. Anything that allows travel to be more efficient and available to more and more people is a flight in the right direction.

We can only gain by understanding the world we live in and our neighbors who share it with us.