Wednesday, April 27 2005 17:42 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

BLAGNAC (France): The world's largest passenger plane, the Airbus A380, took off successfully on its maiden flight today (Apr 27, 2005), a milestone for aviation and for the European aircraft-maker's battle with American rival Boeing.

The giant plane's four engines hauled its double-decked, 280-metric tonne fuselage aloft at 10:29 a.m. (13:59 IST), an achievement watched by thousands of spectators 101 years after the Wright brothers first mastered controlled, sustained flight.

The plane was carrying a crew of six and 20 metric tonne s of on-board test instruments. Its first flight was expected to last about four hours.

"The takeoff went perfectly,'' Alain Garcia, an Airbus engineering executive, said on LCI television.

The plane was likely to stay within 160 kilometres of the airport in Blagnac, a suburb of Toulouse in southwest France, from where it took off. It was beaming back real-time measurements to Airbus headquarters at Blagnac.

There were cheers and applause, as the white jet with a blue tail, its engines surprisingly quiet, picked up speed down the runway and lifted smoothly into the blue skies. Fire trucks were stationed alongside the runway as a precaution.

Airbus chief test pilot Jacques Rosay, flight captain Claude Lelaie and four fellow crewmembers, who all wore orange flight suits, were taking no chances. They had said that they would be wearing parachutes during the first flight, in accordance with company policy. A handrail leads from the cockpit to an escape door that can be jettisoned if the pilots lose control of the plane. The flight capped 11 years of preparation and $ 13 billion in spending. Spectators camped out by the airport to be there for what some said was Europe's biggest aviation event since the first flight of the Concorde in 1969.

The A380, with a catalogue price of $ 282 million, represents a huge bet by Airbus that international airlines will need bigger aircraft to transport passengers between ever-busier hub airports.

But some analysts say signs of a boom in the market for smaller wide-body planes, such as Boeing's long-range 787 "Dreamliner,'' show that Airbus was wrong to focus so much time and money on its super jumbo.

The president of Boeing's French subsidiary, Yves Galland, said that he watched the televised takeoff and "shared the emotion of the people of Airbus.''