As the Airbus A380, biggest passenger plane ever built, was unveiled to the world Tuesday in France, officials at Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford were hopeful that most of the giant planes will be powered by engines made by a Pratt-General Electric partnership. So far it is in the lead. Click on Read more for the full story.The Pratt-GE partnership, a 50-50 joint venture formed in 1996 to compete with British engine builder Rolls-Royce, said it has won engine contracts for 73 A380s. That is 49 percent of the 149 planes ordered worldwide.Rolls-Royce has engine contracts for 49 planes, or 33 percent. Four buyers with 27 planes on firm order are undecided on engine choice.
Airbus SAS is a consortium of European aerospace companies, and a bevy of European heads of state were on hand at Tuesday's rollout to praise the plane.
Configured for three seating classes, the A380 can carry 555 passengers, about 140 more than a similarly arranged Boeing 747. The new jet could carry as many as 800 passengers if all seats were economy class.
David Franus, a power systems analyst with Forecast International, a Newtown-based aerospace consulting firm, said the GP7200 series turbofan engine built by Engine Alliance should hold its advantage.
"Unquestionably Rolls-Royce will get its share," he said. "Will the share be 50-50? It'll probably be that way from now out till 2008, 2009. But after that, we see the Engine Alliance jumping out pretty quickly."
The four-engine A380 can carry 555 passengers, 139 more than a similarly configured Boeing 747.
Buyers - which have included Air France, Lufthansa, Qantas and Emirates Airlines of Dubai, FedEx and UPS, but no U.S. passenger carrier - choose engines independently of the airframes.
The Trent 900 engine made by Rolls-Royce will power the A380s scheduled for initial flight testing in March. It also will power the Singapore Airlines flights that will introduce the A380 to commercial service.
Franus said that was nothing more than "the luck of the draw." The engine built by Pratt and General Electric, both based in Connecticut, will be in wider use as the super-jumbo jet goes into wider service.
"The A380 program is important for us," said Pratt spokesman Daniel Coulom, "and we're going to compete vigorously for every engine contract that comes down the pike."
The A380 has a 262-foot wingspan and a tail as tall as a seven-story building. It cost $13 billion to develop.
The A380's launch seemed certain to become a milestone in civil aviation history alongside the Concorde and the Boeing Co.'s 747, the first wide-body passenger jet. Unlike the supersonic Concorde, however, whose claim to fame was how fast it crossed the Atlantic, this latest fruit of European aerospace cooperation will ultimately be judged on how fast it makes money.
Airbus already has 149 orders for the $280 million plane. Airbus says companies have options on dozens more and the program will break even after 250 sales - an objective it hopes to reach within three years.
Airbus hopes to sell 750 superjumbos to airlines operating services between the busiest airports, mainly in Asia, which serve as hubs, or stopovers between connecting flights.
Airports across the world are spending billions on improvements to accommodate the giant jets, but there is concern that some may not be ready in time.
Although Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks has accommodated the Concorde and the giant Russian Antonov An-124 freighter, once the world's largest plane, acting airport administrator Barry Pallanck said it cannot accommodate the A380 except in an emergency.
"With that wingspan, we wouldn't have the clearance here for it on the taxiways," Pallanck said. Moreover, Bradley's runways are designed to handled planes weighting as much as 710,000 pounds, he said, but the A380s maximum weight is 851,000 pounds.
"A lot of airports won't be able to take it because of the size and what it's capable of carrying," Pallanck said.
Boeing sees demand for only 400 jets larger than its 747 over the next two decades, as passengers increasingly gravitate toward direct flights aboard a new generation of smaller, long-range jets like its planned 7E7.
Airbus trailed Boeing until 2003, when it delivered more planes than its U.S. rival for the first time - a feat it matched last year, with 320 deliveries to Boeing's 285, and is likely to repeat this year. Sustaining that lead will depend partly on the outcome of Airbus' audacious bet on strong demand for the A380.
