V-Flyer

Travelled on the new BA A380 - they are doing the "proving" flights to FRA so the pilots and crew can get used to the new plane, and the pilots can do enough manual landings. Most weekdays in August are the A380, but Sundays were expected to be on the regulatr A319, so I was surprised when I did online checkin to see it was the A380.

Was offered an upgrade for £65, but didn't see the point on such a short flights. They had only sold the A319 capacity, so the plane was much less than half full, even using just the downstairs cabin.

Delayed for 40 minutes getting off stand; they had connected the upper jetway (even though not using it) and they couldn't get it back off the plane...

Slow trundle to the runway, and a bit of a wait to take off, so we were an hour late. Flight time was 1h 5m (schedule is 1h 45m) so we landed only 30 minutes late. No IFE turned on for this flight.

The A380 economy cabin & seat are "standard economy"; it seemed much quieter than mormal, but the flaps movement was very loud indeed!

I was in window seat 27K - which loses half the foot space to the large IFE box. All the K seats are like this, so be prepared to sit "slanted" if you want to put your feet forward, and share your neighbour's foot space. There is no way you can put any rasonable size hand luggage under there; it is made worse by the "angle" of the fuselage.

One interesting(!) thing I noticed; in the toilets they have drinking cup dispenser, with lots of little paper cups. Very nice touch - however they are right next to an icon showing "not drinking water" so I don't understand that one...

Landing was pretty rough - I guess the pilot was still practising firm landings!

I think this will make for a pleasant long haul economy flight - it might impact VS on the LAX run - providing you don't sit in the K!

Very interesting - thanks for posting. That's a good tip on the Y K seats, is it ALL K seats or just some?

The A380 has a reputation of being very quiet on board, and haven't heard the comments re flap track noise before - do you think that was just where you were sat, or would it seem loud throughout the cabin? There again, they only operate at take-off and landing, so not too big a deal.

Did you spy the other cabins at all?

Yes - all the K seats have this box (in this economy cabin,anyway) There is also one between H & J (on the J side) that is not quite as wide. Similar setup on D to G, but not as bad as no "curving fuselage" there.I didn't check A to C.

The under seat area for J wasn't very wide either, due to the frame of the seat supports - you probably wouldn't get a reasonable size bag in there - but I use the foot space for my feet anyway!

I was sitting just behind the wing root so I was close to the flap motors; maybe it seemed so loud as the overall noise level was quite low - but it was certainly a "bit of a scream" for several seconds. And it was very noisy when the wheels came down as well.

The other cabins seemed to be "standard BA" - I didn't get upstairs at all so I only saw economy and club world.

Thanks for the TR. I'm looking forward to trying out the A380 to LAX in March.