Today the Airbus A380 completed its first successful flight in Frawnce. This is one HUGE plane...bigger than the 747!
It’s taken Airbus 11 years and $13 billion (and with a $1 billion cost overrun) to get to this point. Each 555-passenger, 600-ton double-decker superjumbo (and may I remind you that this is NOT a novel idea; Boeing once contemplated a double-decker 747 back in the early 70s) will cost $282 million each. So anyone who files on such an airplane will ultimately pick up the tab.
Airbus is betting there will be a higher demand for airlines to move large groups of passengers between major hubs (LAX, ORD, Heathrow). Boeing, on the other hand, thinks the key is moving passengers between smaller hubs (ATL to THF, for example) and that is why they are developing the 787 Dreamliner; they’ve just picked up Air Canada on its order list.

It will be an interesting battle to see which method of air passenger transport will prevail.