High-tech bar: This how the bar and chill-out lounge in the A380's first-class will look like.

Airbus is 80 per cent owned by European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co., a consortium formed in 2000 by France's Aerospatiale Matra, Germany's DaimlerChrysler Aerospace and Spain's Construcciones Aeronauticas SA. The rest is held by Britain's BAE Systems Inc. EADS has a dual leadership structure, with a French and a German as co-CEOs. Noël Forgeard is the company's CEO.

It has about 45,000 employees at sites mainly in Germany, France, Britain and Spain.

The A380 Family starts from a baseline passenger aircraft with a capacity of 555 passengers in three classes, and a range of up to 15,000 km. The freighter version, the A380F, will carry a payload of 150 tonnes over 10,400 km.

The A380 can be powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines or GP7200 engines from The Engine Alliance (a General Electric and Pratt & Whitney joint venture).

Photograph: GEORGES GOBET/AFP/Getty Images

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