The Airbus A380 is one of the most incredible planes flying today, even judged by size alone.
It usually seats around 500 passengers, but can hold as many as 853 — making it the largest passenger aircraft on the planet.
After watching the behemoth perform at this year's Paris Air Show, we took a trip south to Toulouse, the French city where Airbus assembles many of its planes, to get an inside look at just what it takes to put together the A380.
After a trip by boat, barge, and truck, the various parts that make up the jumbo jet are assembled in an enormous building, in a process that takes just 10 to 11 days — fast enough that Airbus can produce 2.5 per month.
(The process of building and testing the entire plane, which sells for nearly $400 million, takes between 10 months and a year.)
It's remarkable.
Note: We've censored the tail of the jets in these photos, per Airbus's request to protect their customers' privacy.
Before work starts in Toulouse, the pieces need to get there. The various parts of Airbus planes are built at plants around Europe. Usually, they're flown to Toulouse in the endearingly ugly 'Beluga' cargo plane.
But the A380 is huge — so huge, its various parts don't fit in the Beluga.
So Airbus came up with a special delivery process, the Oversize Transport Itinerary.
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