Air France To Introduce A380 Narita Service in 2009

There's a report out yesterday that Air France announced that it's going to introduce service to Narita (Japan) in 2009 with the A380. The implications of this otherwise unremarkable report are, in fact, quite remarkable. I've linked to the Japanese website that reported this but the report's unreadable unless you've got some sort of translator thing going.

What's important here is that the aircraft will be configured for 444 passengers. Yes friends, this is the 555 passenger capacity, soon to be expanded to 850 or so A380 Albatross.

What this is telling the world, for those who take an interest in such things, is that the weight/payload equation on the A380 is emerging like Marley's ghost, rattling its chains and otherwise making itself obnoxious.

My old man used to say that one of the things that a fellow could not do was put eight pounds of sugar (well, he didn't say sugar but this is a family oriented blog) in a five pound bag, no matter how good his intentions were.