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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Posted 11/14/2007 05:11:00 PM by Douglas

Meet the Airbus A380, just like this guy didn't.
Most of that ugliness is the fault of the plane's bulging forehead, a trait that resulted from an engineering decision to place the cockpit below the upper deck. It is useful to think of a jetliner as a sort of horizontal skyscraper. To recall the words of architecture critic Paul Goldberger, writing in a 2005 issue of the New Yorker: "Most architects who design skyscrapers focus on two aesthetic problems. How to meet the ground and how to meet the sky -- the top and the bottom, in other words." With airplanes, as with office towers, the observer's gaze is drawn instinctively to their extremities, and their attractiveness, or lack thereof, is personified through the sculpting of the nose and tail sections. Not that the A380's tail is anything special either, but it's hard to get past that forehead.
Other than size maybe, most people can't tell an Airbus from a Boeing, nor a 737 from a 767, except from size. But just as the signature 'hump' gave the 747 its signature look, the front view of the new Airbus looks like a frontal view of the Elephant Man with a tight fitting skull cap. Or a dolphin with Down syndrome.

Still, that's not why I'll never set foot on the godamned thing. There are 400 to 600 other reasons for that, depending on seating configuration.


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