Watching A380s coming to life at Toulouse Blagnac airport

Today I cashed in a couple hundred boyfriend points and went with Jacq to the Airbus tour at Toulouse's Blagnac airport.

Here they assemble every A380, A340, A330, A320 and a few other models that are then delivered to carriers across the world.

Our tour focussed on the A380. For 9.50 Euros each we got an insight into how the world's largest passenger aircraft is manufactured.

The tour started with a quick overview of the inaugural flight of the aircraft from April 2005 and were given a little insight into some of the many tests that the prototype models underwent in order to get certified by the FAA.

After that we boarded a bus that took us to one of the hangars where the aircraft are assembled. Parts are shipped in to Toulouse from the UK, Germany and parts of France via the Beluga A300's, barges and road transit. Then the pieces are assembled in Toulouse with just 2 weeks needed to put a completed aircraft together.

Airbus said they have over 240 orders for the A380s currently paid for with deliveries scheduled into 2014. Air France put in a request for an extended A380 that would be capable of carrying 1,000 passengers in a full 2-level economy configuration. The current 72m long A380's have a variety of capacities depending on the configuration ranging from 450 for Qantas up to 517 for Emirates and so on.

After visiting the hangar we had a quick look at a mockup interior which was interesting but pretty aged with a lot of the finishes tearing or peeling away.

The tour is a good insight into the manufacturing process of the A380, but aviation enthusiasts may be left wanting a little more. I would have liked to have been given a tour of the actual airport, to have seen the tower and to have taken a closer look at areas like the run up bays and other hangars. Getting closer to some more finished aircraft or being able to watch a few movements on tarmac would have been a nice bonus.

After the A380 experience, there was an option to take a Concorde tour (two of the original fleet are located at Blagnac) that you could purchase as well as the A380 tour but we only found this out at the end which was a bit disappointing.

All in all, not a bad morning for anyone interested in aviation, but a few little extras could have added a lot to the day.