Maiden Airbus A380 commercial flight from Singapore to Sydney

The A380 Airbus is the largest passenger airliner in the world manufactured by EADS (Airbus S.A.S.). It is a double-deck, four-engined airliner. upper deck extends along the entire length of the fuselage. This allows for a cabin with 50 percent more floor space than the next largest airliner, the Boeing 747-400. The A380 Airbus can seat 525 people in standard three-class configuration or up to 853 people in full economy class configuration. There are 2 models, the passenger model A380-800 and is the largest passenger airliner in the world, bigger than the Boeing 747. The A380-800 has a design range of 15,200 km which will allow it to fly from Hong Kong to New York nonstop. It has a cruising speed of Mach 0.85 (about 900 km/h or 560 mph at cruise altitude.

The Singapore Airlines (SIA) will have the honor of flying the A380-800 maiden Airbus A380 commercial flight on 25 October 2007. The maiden flight will be from Singapore to Sydney. SIA is offering seats on this historic maiden flight for bidding on eBay and it has obtained bids of almost 2 million Singapore dollars (USD 1.32 million) and has only 24 seats left as reported on 13 September 2007.

Singapore Airlines said a record Singapore Dollars 153,000 was paid for a "Singapore Airlines Suites Package" for this Singapore-Sydney maiden flight.

A search on eBay today (14 September 2007) revealed 10 outstanding bids for seats ranging from the highest bid of USD5,600 for 2 Business class seats to USD 1225 for 2 Economy class seats with 8 to 9 hours remaining before the bidding close.

Singapore Airlines said proceeds from the sales will go to charity. That will be a lot of money for charity. Lucky Singapore charities. Wonder which one will get to benefit.