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LOS ANGELES – 03/19/07 – The world’s largest passenger aircraft – the four-engine Airbus A380 – made its maiden arrival at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) yesterday morning.

Sporting the colorful livery of Australia’s Qantas, the huge airplane touched down at LAX just about 15 minutes after a sister aircraft, flying for German carrier Lufthansa, landed at New York’s Kennedy International Airport.

The plane’s statistics are staggering. The double-decker airplane is 239 feet in length, boasts a wingspan equal to the length of a football field, with a tail that rises some 80 feet off the ground.

The 525-ton A380 can seat as many as 550 passengers, hold 81,890 gallons of fuel, cruise at 560 mph and fly some 8,000 nautical miles.

EADS Airbus – the European Union-based consortium that designed and built the aircraft – hopes the A380, which is designed to carry more people farther than any plane in history, will dominate air travel for the next two decades.

For Airbus, which has been beset by management and financial problems including a two-year delay to the A380 that wiped out more than $6.61 billion in profit forecasts, the flight is a chance to prove that the plane will be ready when the first deliveries are made in October to Singapore Airlines.

Airbus has 166 orders from 15 airlines for the new plane, which already has made tests flights in Europe and to Asia.

The Los Angeles airport, the fifth-busiest worldwide, is expected to be the first US destination for the A380 when it enters commercial service.

The inaugural Los Angeles flight was devoid of passengers and crew, save for those in the cockpit.

EADS Airbus said the plane will undergo tests at LAX, including airfield maneuvers, docking at the terminal gate, and ground and gate handling exercises.

Los Angeles World Airports, which administers operations at LAX, ultimately plans to spend about $121 million to prepare for the A380, and already has reportedly earmarked more than $50 million to improve runway and taxiway intersections to accommodate the new aircraft.

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