Yesterday evening in downtown Paris the Flightglobal team spent about 10 minutes watching a red Fiat 500 try to parallel park in between two larger cars. Admittedly, the space was quite small, but the driver of the little red Fiat seemed to disregard the bumpers of the cars to the front and to the rear. We tried to guide the troubled driver into her space, but to no avail the other cars were of no interest.
Parking an A380, the world’s largest commercial aircraft by passenger capacity, maximum takeoff weight and wingspan, isn’t built with bumpers and its margins for error are considerably smaller when squeezing the superjumbo into its spot on the Paris Air Show static display. Yesterday afternoon, not long before the Great Fiat Bumper Massacre of 2011, MSN004‘s right wingtip clipped a small structure, severing the massive wing fence. The result was the cancellation of the A380’s participation in both the flying display and, more importantly, any kind of flying at all.
This isn’t the first time the A380 – or a jumbo jet – has “lovetapped” another object, but again, the setting was quite public and in the overnight vacuum of news between the Sunday’s Day Zero and Monday’s Day One the clip made its way around the world in a hurry.
Photo Credit @Niekvdz
This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.
This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.