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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, July 17, 2002

French President Inaugurates Airbus A380 Assembly Site

French President Jacques Chirac inaugurated an assembly site in Blagnac, Haute-Garonne in southern France Tuesday for the future Airbus A380, a project of world's largest passenger plane.


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French President Jacques Chirac inaugurated an assembly site in Blagnac, Haute-Garonne in southern France Tuesday for the future Airbus A380, a project of world's largest passenger plane.

"The A380 is the symbol of what Europe can achieve...We have united our efforts, put together our capacities and benefited fromour differences," said Chirac at the site near French southern city of Toulouse.

Airbus symbolizes "the highest point of technology in a sector where global competition is at a very high level," he said after touring the site of 50 hectare and watching a virtual presentationof the future factory when completed by the end of 2003.

Airbus A380, with a seating capacity for 555 passengers, is to enter service in 2006 and expected to replace its main rival Boeing 747-400.

The European efforts and success in developing Airbus planes confirm the necessity to invest in research and innovation, said the French president.

France, a pioneer in this field, will stick to the "objective of spending 3 percent of annual gross domestic product (GDP) in research and innovation by 2010," he said.

Airbus A380 is the most expensive aircraft ever built with an estimated development cost of 10.7 billion U.S. dollars financed by the European aeronautic group EADS, the British BAE Systems andpartners from other nations.

It has pocketed 97 orders and Chirac said the European groups aim at selling 750 A380 by 2019, which means it will take half of the market of large passenger planes in 20 years.


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