Airbus superjumbo may have rough landing

SEATTLE — It’s one thing to build a really, really big airplane. It’s quite another to find a place for it to land.

U.S. airports from Seattle to Atlanta say accommodating Airbus SAS’s new superjumbo A380 in anything other than an emergency would require major construction. Runways would need widening and terminals would need upgrades to load and unload the double-decker plane easily.

Even with those improvements, airports might need to curtail other airport traffic to let the big jet lumber through the airfield. And some officials worry the weight of the A380 would collapse tunnels and buckle overpasses.

What’s more, some airport officials say they just aren’t seeing the demand for the A380 that would warrant such cost and inconvenience.

“Let’s do a cost/benefit analysis: Are you really going to spend millions of dollars (when) you might have two of them a day fly in?” said aviation analyst Mike Boyd.

Stretching about three-quarters of the length of a football field, the A380 isn’t much longer than Boeing Co.’s latest version of the 747, the largest commercial airplane in the skies until the A380 enters service next year.

But the A380’s 261-foot wingspan is 50 feet wider than the 747, broader than many runways and taxiways were built to accommodate. The airplane also weighs in at a maximum of 1.2 million pounds, 30 percent more than the biggest 747.

The Federal Aviation Administration says just four U.S. airports — John F. Kennedy in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Miami — are formally working with regulators on plans to accept the new plane for passengers. Another two — Anchorage and Memphis — are working with the FAA to take the cargo version.

Airbus says it also has talked with many other U.S. airports and anticipates several more will be able to land the plane on a regular basis by 2011. Worldwide, the company also says plenty of airports will see the A380 in the next five years, but it’s unclear how many of those airports will be ready by 2006.

Outside the United States, those that are making preparations include London’s Heathrow — which is spending more than $800 million on renovations — Charles de Gaulle in Paris, Changi Airport in Singapore and Australia’s Sydney Airport.