A380: eerily quiet cruise ship of the skies

‘It felt less like being in a plane than in a strange kind of conference centre’

The first thing you noticed was the silence. Even sitting by the engines at takeoff, you didn’t need to raise your voice on the A380 superjumbo. The quiet was almost eerie.

It was a monstrous double-decker so big it felt like travelling in two planes stuck on top of one other. It was a kind of cruise ship of the skies with staircases, bars and private first-class cabins, spilling out a wave passengers when it landed at airports. And yet, when you were onboard, it somehow managed to feel delicate.

When I took the first public flight on the Airbus A380 in Toulouse in 2007, I remember staring out of the window over the Pyrenees, thinking something was odd. It was the lighting. It felt less like being in a plane than in a strange kind of conference centre.

The windows were bigger, letting in more natural light, and there were special light systems to alter cabin mood.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/feb/14/a380-a-comfortable-eerily-quiet-cruise-ship-of-the-skies