Bengaluru saw a historic event on Friday at around 3.40 pm when an Emirates Airbus A380 touched down at Kempegowda International Airport. The largest passenger plane in the world made its inaugural commercial journey to the city in southern India.
The pilots of the aircraft were Bengali Sandeep Prabhu and Captain Nikhil Thigarajan.
Three “follow me” trucks led the jet from the south runway, where it landed, to the north runway, where it docked at Gate 44.
The flight departed from Dubai at 10 a.m. local time, and it arrived seven minutes early in Bengaluru. The superjumbo arrived more than two weeks before its scheduled arrival date on October 30. At the welcome reception in Bengaluru, ST Somashekar, the state of Karnataka’s minister of cooperation, H.E. Dr Ahmed Abdel Rahman AlBanna, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to India, and Hari Marar, managing director and chief executive officer of Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL), welcomed the flight carrying 224 passengers.
The double-deck wide-body aircraft took off once more after seven o’clock.
Since the Emirates started operating the route between Dubai and Mumbai in 2014, Bengaluru is now the second city in the country to be served by the renowned aircraft.
On October 30, Emirates will launch its A380 service between Dubai and Bengaluru, operating under the aircraft numbers EK568 and EK569, respectively. The daily flight departs from the airline’s hub at 21:25 and arrives in Bengaluru at 02:30. The day after, local time. The flight back from Kempegowda International Airport leaves at 4:30 and arrives in Dubai at 7:10.
Emirates wants to increase the number of sites using well-liked aircraft from over 30 to over 40 by March 2023.
The Emirates believes that the superjumbo weighs between 510 and 575 tonnes. It is longer than two blue whales and taller than five giraffes. The aircraft can cruise at an altitude of 43,100 feet and can cover a distance of up to 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km). The aircraft has roughly 480 seats.
