Airbus team watch their biggest, fattest creation take-off 

TOULOUSE - Fernando Alonso looks out of his office windows at the brand new airplanes on the tarmac, freshly painted in the colours of their airlines, ready for delivery.

There are big A340s, mid-sized A330s, smaller A320s: the high-selling models that have pushed Airbus ahead of Boeing in the battle for domination of the global aircraft market.

They'll be heading off to the four corners: to Aer Lingus, Qatar Airways, Iberia, South African Airways, Singapore Airlines, America West.

"Look at them!" says Alonso, who knows their inner secrets better than anyone, his eyes shining, dreamy, affectionate. "Aren't they beautiful?"

But the plane he loves above all is hidden, tucked away inside the biggest building in Europe. It's the newest Airbus, the biggest, the fattest - and maybe not the most beautiful.

The A380, the biggest passenger jet ever built, has just been given into his care. It has been 10 years in gestation, from conception, to construction of its parts in England, France, Germany and Spain, to final assembly here at Airbus in Toulouse, where Alonso has worked as a test pilot and engineer for 22 years, rising to director of flight testing and development.

Now, and for the next year, the double-decker giant - 50 per cent greater in volume than the largest Boeing 747 - will be his responsibility, his baby.

"The A380 is, for me, a dream," says Alonso, 49, more than twice as old as his Formula One namesake.

"I have seen this airplane develop from beginning to end. And now I am responsible - I and my team, because this is a great team effort - for the final fine-tuning."

The fine-tuning in flight - a hair-raising business to the outsider, pushing the airborne metal beast to its limits and beyond - is about to begin.

The Spaniard and five others were expected to be on its maiden flight last night, weather permitting.

Will he feel no fear? "I'll feel excited. Really excited. But at the same time I'll be so busy, so focused on the job at hand, that the excitement will not be as great for me as for the thousands of people who will be watching the plane take off."

Alonso has spent "half his life" working in the Iron Bird. This is a huge hulking metal contraption that replicates in every detail the functioning of the A380, from wings to tail, engines and landing gear.

The man in the simulator cabin is "flying" the new plane. Already, through hundreds of hours spent in this cabin with computer screen, keyboard, mouse and 150 buttons and switches, Alonso has contributed vital information to the engineers.

"We give the operational flavour the specialist engineer does not have," he says.

"We look at the plane's responses in their totality once it is in the air. We test the Iron Bird to its limits, simulating a complete engine failure, for example, and drawing information from what happens that we can then contribute to the improvement of the plane's overall safety. "The difference between this 'development simulator' and the simulators used by pilots is that, while in those we teach the pilots what to do, here we teach the plane to fly."

When the first flight takes off, and during the 90 hours or so a month Alonso will be flying in the A380 over the next year, he won't be sitting in the flight deck.

His position as chef d'orchestre (his words), will be 10m behind the pilots, where Business Class would be.

The plane will look pretty much as it will when it enters service. (More than 150 A380s have been ordered.) Yet inside, it all looks scarily unfinished.

Stepping into MSN1, as the first Airbus is known in the company, you see none of the sights you'd expect: no carpets, no seats, no lockers, no subtly lit ceiling. Instead, there are metal edges with every rivet visible; boxes of inscrutable engineering devices; metal pipes; and rivers and rolls of wiring (800km of it), much of it dangling from the Meccano ceiling.

In front of Alonso's seat are eight large screens on which he keeps his eyes on the 6000 things he has to watch. One monitor is connected to 10 cameras on the plane's exterior, watching all the key areas. He sees a mosaic of 10 images, but if he wishes to zero in on one, he touches the screen and the image fills the space.

His job as chef d'orchestre requires him to be in permanent contact with the chief violinist - the pilot.

"I'll ask the pilot to do this manoeuvre or that, to bank 30 degrees left, or to climb - and then the pilot will tell me how the plane responds, whether it is too brusquely, or too slowly, and we will adjust that in the air, and I will feed information to the software accordingly."

The ability to communicate crisply with the pilot is critical. "That is why a flight-test engineer must also be a test pilot. Not all test pilots are engineers, but for my job you must be both."

In the giant hangar where the plane is assembled, Alonso pauses to contemplate the complex monster. It is like a piece of sculpture by Frank Gehry or Richard Serra, whose mighty, undulating metal works are on exhibit at the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

"Yes, it is a work of art," Alonso says.

"But it is beauty with a purpose. It carries vast quantities of fuel. And, in flight, the tip [of the wing] is three or four metres higher relative to the fuselage than it is on the ground."

That's how Alonso sees it, although he understands the science and mechanics of hoisting a monster like the A380 into the air, and keeping it there for 15,000km, better than anyone.

"But you know," he confides, "it's still magic that they fly."

Fernando Alonso

* Airbus director of flight testing and development at Toulouse.
* He studied aeronautical engineering in Madrid.
* Alonso began his career with McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach, California, where he went on a scholarship and remained 2 1/2 years and obtained his pilot's licence.
* He joined Airbus in 1982, 10 years after the company was founded.
* He has worked as a test pilot and engineer for Airbus.

- INDEPENDENT