How green is the superjumbo?

So the big bird has finally flown. The first commercial flight of the new A380 took off from Singapore this morning headed for Sydney, with a belly full of eager-eyed passengers, some donating up to $10,000 to charity for their place in aviation history.

There has been so much fanfare accompanying this new superjumbo from Airbus that, to be honest, it's a relief that she has at last pulled away from the departure gate with her first paying passengers. If this really was a paradigm shift in flying then it might warrant all this attention, but in reality it illustrates to me just how little we've travelled in terms of aviation innovation since 1970 when the Boeing 747 "Jumbo Jet" first took to the air. It hardly compares to the "leap forward" made by Concorde's first commercial flight just a few years later.

I'm sure there will be many who marvel at this new plane's engineering prowess, but the thing that really counts today is can this plane get as many people from A to B using as little fuel as possible? Much has been made about the A380's green credentials and most of it, sadly, has been vastly overblown. The plane's basic principle is sound - if something is going to take to the air it might as well have as many people on board as possible to maximise the fuel used. But on closer inspection the Airbus claims lose a lot of their lustre.

Airbus's website says that the plane will burn 2.9 litres of fuel per passenger for every 100km travelled, or, put another way, it will emit 75 grammes of carbon dioxide per passenger kilometre. This, says Airbus, is a better fuel efficiency than a hybrid car. Sounds impressive, doesn't it?

But how did it arrive at that figure? Well, I couldn't find an explanation on the website, and I called the UK office but no one returned my call. So I'm reliant on the National Center for Public Policy Research in the US, who did manage to extract the details from Airbus. Airbus told them that the measurements were based on the A380 carrying 555 passengers at a cruising speed of 900km - but with no luggage or cargo on board.

Singapore Airlines has said that its A380s will be set up in the traditional three-class configuration, but will be carrying "less than 480 passengers". This is because it wants to give passengers more space - including those paying big bucks to travel in its much-heralded "12 ultra-luxurious suites". (The A380 can, in theory, carry 853 passengers, but it is highly unlikely that any airline will utilise this, except perhaps on some short-range internal routes in, say, China and Japan.) Given that most of these passengers will have hand luggage and a suitcase or two, you can safely assume that the quoted fuel efficiency is going to be less impressive than it first appears. And don't forget that it is rare for a passenger flight to take off without cramming commercial cargo on board too - or that carrying capacity among the so-called legacy carriers who are ordering up these planes (not in the quantity that Airbus had hoped for) is lucky to ever break through the 80% barrier.