In a poignant moment marked only locally, the fuselage of the last A380 super-jumbo to be built made its night-time passage through the streets of the French village of Levignac, on the way from Saint-Nazaire, where it was built to Toulouse, where it will undergo final assembly.
Each of the nearly A380s before it made the same night-time trip, mounted on trucks, through the village’s narrow streets, dwarfing most of its houses and stores. Airbus announced a year ago that it was discontinuing production because there were not enough new orders for the fuel-thirsty four-engine jet.
Even the last plane carries a complication with it; it is one of five that were to be the last part of the order from Emirates, which operates about half of all A380s ever built, but which tried to cancel the last five, while Airbus insists the planes were past the cancelation point in the contracts. So, even as the first A380 ever built has been scrapped for parts, the future of the last is in question.
