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Singapore Air to sell Airbus A380 seats on eBay

While suborbital flights and civilian space travel are all the rage, you might have missed the fact that there’s pretty exciting aviation news closer to terra firma. After many delays, the double-decker, jumbo jet Airbus 380, which is now the largest passenger airliner in the world, will make its maiden commercial flight ~~this~~ on October 25th, 2007. Singapore Airlines will fly a brand-new A380 from Singapore to Sydney, Australia, and back on October 26th.

Deal: Singapore Airlines has announced that seats for the first-ever commercial A380 flight will be auctioned off on eBay starting on August 27th, with all of the proceeds (yes, every dollar) going to benefit charities, including Médecins Sans Frontières (aka Doctors without Borders). Winning bidders may be required to purchase their seat with PayPal, so you might want to get an account now, if you don’t already have one.

How much would you pay to joing the first commercial Airbus A380 flight? Tell us in the Comments section below.

When: With so many previous delays in delivery, Singapore Airlines has not yet announced the exact dates of the first commercial A380 flight. Once they do, the airline says that the eBay auction will start a few weeks before departure. Register online to receive e-mail updates and announcements of the latest news.

Why Go: To be a part of aviation history, as long as you’re prepared to pay sky-high prices for one of those seats. If it makes a difference to you, you’ll also receive a ceremonial certificate testifying to the fact that you were on the first-ever commercial A380 flight.

Why Not: The Australian airline Qantas, which is the next airline scheduled to receive delivery of an A380, may use it on flights between LAX and Melbourne and/or Sydney, so why not wait until then? Then you won’t also have to buy a ticket for a round-trip flight to Singapore, which costs from $900 during October.

Critique: Is bigger necessarily better? The “superjumbo” A380 can carry up to 853 people in an all-economy class configuration, although Singapore Airlines only plans to seat 485 passengers on its first flight. With all that extra cabin room, some airlines have speculated about the possibility of adding more amenities for long-haul passengers, like showers and work-out rooms. However, the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which seats only about 250 passengers, promises to be 20% more fuel efficient than comparable craft. It will start flying commercial passengers as early as May 2008.

Contact: Singapore Airlines, (800) 742-3333

– Sara Benson, L.A. Times Travel Deal Detective

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 26, 2007 at 7:55 am by Sara Benson and is filed under Asia, Frequent Flier, Los Angeles, News, Tips & Advice, Pacific & Australia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

One Comment on “Singapore Air to sell Airbus A380 seats on eBay”

Robert Park Says:
October 26th, 2007 at 9:29 am
As we know the first successful flight has finally taken place yesterday. Airbus claims the fuel efficiency of “2.9 liters of fuel per passenger for every 100km” looks too good to be true but a company like Airbus must have done enough research before publishing their statistics. Thats comparable to the modern hybrid cars.

I found this picture on the internet which really shows the size of the place .. (cars look tiny ants in front of it)

http://www.travelandtourisminfo.com/Singapore/Singapore-Photos-and-Pictures.asp

The bigger issue is terminal space. There just isn’t enough space to park an A380 at most airport terminals. Airbus has spent an estimated $15 billion on the development of the A380. The price for a single plane is listed at $300 million. I have used Singapore Airlines many times to go visit Singapore and looking forward to take a ride on A380 next time.