The world’s largest passenger plane, the Airbus A380, has been shown off at a special ceremony in France. People won’t be able fly in it until 2006, but when they do it will carry more of them than a Boeing 747. At the moment that’s the biggest passenger plane in the skies, but the A380 — which cost around £6 billion to develop and build — will overtake it. Only the Russian Antonov An-225 transport plane is bigger than the A380 but that does not carry passengers. To make back the money the plane cost to build airbus would need to sell 250 of the giant aircraft — so far they’ve got orders for 129.