Airbus offered a first peek at its colossal new double-decked jet Friday, inaugurating a cavernous factory here where the plane's components are to be gathered from production sites across Europe and clamped together to form the world's largest civilian aircraft. In a show that combined the upbeat speeches of a corporate pep rally with the thumping theatrics of a rock concert, Airbus parted a curtain to reveal the A380, minus its nose and with its fuselage obscured by scaffolding, but with wings spreading majestically 79.5m across the factory floor.
"This is not just the story of a magnificent airplane," said Noel Forgeard, the chief executive of Airbus, which is owned by Europe's aerospace industry. "It's a bright page in the history of a unified Europe."
Coming a week after the expansion of the European Union to 25 nations, which prompted less joy than ennui among many here, Airbus' presentation had the atmosphere of a belated European celebration.
Airbus has already booked orders for 129 of the 555-seat planes, which will challenge the long dominance of Boeing's 747 in the jumbo jet category. While Airbus needs to sell at least 250 to break even, it is confident that the A380, which once seemed an almost foolhardy gamble, will be a success.
Last year, for the first time in its history, the company delivered more planes of all types than Boeing did, 305 versus 281. And it is expected to win more orders than its American archrival this year, for the fourth year in a row.
Boeing once bestrode commercial aviation, but it has been damaged by a scandal over its government lobbying, by turmoil in its executive suite and by a sense that it has throttled back its ambitions. Its main new project now is the 7E7, a much more modest jet meant to be highly efficient.
An almost cocky tone was evident in some of the remarks made by Airbus executives about the competition.
After Airbus gave the go-ahead for the A380 in late 2000, said one top executive, Gerard Blanc, Boeing was "petrified."
"They tried to react, but they couldn't," Blanc told a receptive crowd that included the prime minister of France, Jean-Pierre Raffarin. "They tried to launch an aircraft, any aircraft. But they didn't."
Analysts say it is not yet clear whether Airbus or Boeing made the right bet on the future of air travel. The sharp differences between the companies' visions -- with Airbus predicting a world of jumbo jets connecting busy hubs like London and Hong Kong and Boeing foreseeing smaller planes hopping directly between cities, has made this one of the starkest battles in business.
"The tendency will be to push for newer, more efficient aircraft," said Charles Champion, the head of the A380 project. "But smaller aircraft does not necessarily mean more efficient."
The A380 unveiled here will never fly: It will be used instead to conduct a battery of tests on the ground. The first airworthy plane is due to be assembled by July and make a maiden flight early next year. The A380 is scheduled to go into commercial service in the second quarter of 2006, initially with Singapore Airlines.
So far, Airbus has lined up 11 airlines to buy A380s, including Air France, Korean Air, Lufthansa and Qantas. In an order that gave the project crucial momentum, Emirates, an airline based in Dubai, agreed last year to take delivery of 41 A380s configured for passengers and two set up for freight.
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