Raw : The world's largest passenger plane - Airbus A380 - arrived for the first time in Russia on Friday, Prime-Tass reported. The plane landed at Moscow's Domodedovo international airport where it will stay until October 17, after which will depart for Seoul to an international aerospace exhibition.

The airliner landed at Domodedovo at 12:00, Moscow time. Before landing it performed a demonstration flight over the runway. During the Airbus A380 stay at Domodedovo its full ground servicing will be carried out. The visit is to demonstrate that the A380 plane successfully complies with the existing airport's infrastructure and to show all the advantages of this plane for air companies and passengers.

The airliner arriving in Moscow is a plane that took part in the programme of A380 flight tests within the framework of certification of this aircraft. At present it is used for the training of flight personnel of air companies and for testing of advanced systems and equipment and takes part in exhibitions and presentations.

The A380 plane's basic version is designed to carry 525 passengers in the standard three-class arrangement at a distance of up to 15,200 kilometres. Nineteen A380 planes are at present used by three air companies (Singapore Airlines, Emirates and Qantas) performing regular flights to 12 cities of the world. All in all, Airbus has received 200 orders for this model from 16 buyers. Since the moment of the putting into operation of the first plane, A380 airliners have performed more than 7,700 commercial flights transporting over 2.5 million people all over the world.

The Airbus A380 is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine airliner manufactured by the European corporation Airbus, a subsidiary of EADS. The largest passenger airliner in the world, the A380 made its maiden flight on 27 April 2005 from Toulouse, France, and made its first commercial flight on 25 October 2007 from Singapore to Sydney with Singapore Airlines. The aircraft was known as the Airbus A3XX during much of its development phase, but the nickname Superjumbo has since become associated with it.

The A380's upper deck extends along the entire length of the fuselage, and its width is equivalent to that of a wide-body aircraft. This allows for a cabin with 50% more floor space than the next-largest airliner, the Boeing 747-400, and provides seating for 525 people in a typical three-class configuration or up to 853 people in all economy class configurations. The postponed freighter version, the A380-800F, is offered as one of the largest freight aircraft, with a payload capacity exceeded only by the Antonov An-225. The A380-800 has a design range of 15,200 km (8,200 nmi), sufficient to fly from New York to Hong Kong for example, and a cruising speed of Mach 0.85 (about 900 km/h or 560 mph at cruising altitude).

Major structural sections of the A380 are built in France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Due to their size, they are brought to the assembly hall in Toulouse in France by surface transportation, rather than by the A300-600ST Beluga aircraft used for other Airbus models. Components of the A380 are provided by suppliers from around the world; the five largest contributors, by value, are Rolls-Royce, SAFRAN, United Technologies, General Electric, and Goodrich.

The front and rear sections of the fuselage are loaded on an Airbus Roll-on/roll-off (RORO) ship, Ville de Bordeaux, in Hamburg in northern Germany, from where they are shipped to the United Kingdom. The wings, which are manufactured at Filton in Bristol and Broughton in North Wales, are transported by barge to Mostyn docks, where the ship adds them to its cargo. In Saint-Nazaire in western France, the ship trades the fuselage sections from Hamburg for larger, assembled sections, some of which include the nose. The ship unloads in Bordeaux. Afterwards, the ship picks up the belly and tail sections by Construcciones Aeronauticas SA in Cadiz in southern Spain, and delivers them to Bordeaux. From there, the A380 parts are transported by barge to Langon, and by oversize road convoys to the assembly hall in Toulouse. New wider roads, canal systems and barges were developed to deliver the A380 parts. After assembly, the aircraft are flown to Hamburg Finkenwerder Airport (XFW) to be furnished and painted. It takes 3,600 l (950 US gal) of paint to cover the 3,100 square metres (33,000 sq ft) exterior of an A380.

Airbus sized the production facilities and supply chain for a production rate of four A380s per month.