An extra 10 million passengers a year will be able to pass through Heathrow airport thanks to a new generation of "super-jumbos".
The Airbus A380, which can carry up to 900 passengers, is in production at sites across Europe and is due to take off in three years.
The airport operator BAA said yesterday it expected the plane to account for up to 60,000 take-offs and landings a year by 2016. This would amount to one in eight flights at Heathrow, the busiest international airport in the world.
Paul Fairbairn, the director of strategic development at BAA, said this would be "good news for the environment and good news for the UK economy".
The A380 has been billed as the most significant development in aviation since the jumbo jet and Concorde. Airbus describes the double-decker plane as a potential "cruise liner in the sky", and claims it will make half the noise of a standard jumbo.
The plane's wings, which span 80 metres, are being manufactured at Broughton in Wales, where the first one was completed this month. The wings will travel down the river Dee by barge to a specially commissioned ship, which will take them to Bordeaux.
The super-jumbo's parts are so big that Airbus has been making dummy runs using vast mock-up rigs to test routes to its base in Toulouse.
Local roads are being widened and trees cut back to make way for convoys carrying the fuselage and bodywork.
Chris Spenhouse, the vice president of the A380 project, said: "The pieces are coming together; the buildings are coming together. We're on track to go into service in 2006."
The first customer will be Singapore Airlines, followed by Virgin Atlantic. Sir Richard Branson, the chairman of Virgin, said he planned to take advantage of the extra space on board to introduce self-service cafes. "At a time when airport capacity is scarce, this gives us a chance to fly more people out of the Heathrow slots which we have managed to get hold of," he said.
A standard version of the super-jumbo will cost $270m (£160m) and, with 550 seats, will be 35% bigger than a Boeing 747. However, Airbus said some Japanese airlines planned to fill the planes with economy class seats, fitting 800 passengers on board. A proposed "stretched" version would accommodate 900 seats.
Airports around the world are rebuilding facilities to make way for the super-jumbo, with BAA investing £450m in its preparations.
Jetties at Heathrow are being shortened to make space for the plane's giant wings and new gangways will be built. Enlarged baggage belts will be introduced to cope with extra passengers and there will be more check-in facilities.
Despite their size, the new planes will be more fuel efficient than a Volkswagen Lupo, according to Airbus executives. It will take at least an hour and a half to load and unload passengers.
Eleven airlines have ordered a total of 129 of the new planes, but British Airways has so far shunned them. Airbus yesterday claimed it remained "confident" of getting BA on board.
