Ramp Person's View of A-380 at Vancouver Airport

The twin-deck A-380 dropped into YVR (Vancouver BC) a few days ago, just after a snow melt and just before the third major snow storm hit (rare on the Pacific coast even up here, for you southern landlubber's copied). The A-380 was on it's around the world airport and GSE compatibility proving flight. With the program delays at Airbus, I guess they can relax a bit on the test schedule.

We've all seen lots of photos of the A-380, but my Tech Ops acquaintances at Air Canada who handled the bird, sent these photos.

I did not edit, but thought you may be interested in scanning through an up-close ramp person's view of the "Flying Forehead" as they call it, because of the shape of double-deck nose drop to cockpit.

They reported its wingspan is impressive and it needs a lot of GSE support, but no big deal to handle vs B-747-400. Photos 080 to 067 are at YVR's remote taxi-thru de-icing centre which was busy. Trans-Pacific jumbo's take up to 30 minutes to deice, and they all depart in the same time period, so many pads required. Glycol is recovered but not re-constituted and recycled on-site like at some more winter-prone airports. For non-airline people, the orange coloured fluid is Type-II de-ice fluid over-coat for holding. The colour is added so you can be sure to cover all the clear type-I. Due to precip just at freezing temp and ice build-up, the A-380 fuselage also had to be type-II'd. See photos around the A-380 NLG.

The aircraft required 4 x CAU's (Heater /Coolers) and 4 GPUs. Photos 015 and 014 show the three-axle MLG inboard trucks that do scrub a bit on tight turns. Photo 039 shows the size of the NLG towing pawl.

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