Airbus workers take to the skies

The staff were flown from Broughton to Toulouse, where the first flight took off on Monday morning, carrying 474 passengers.

Around 1,900 employees are taking part in four test flights this week.

The passengers were chosen at random after 15,000 Airbus employees around the world applied to take part.

Howard Berry, spokesman for the Broughton plant where the aircraft's wings are made, said: "It was advertised in the house magazine and, as often happens with this sort of thing we received far more applications than we could possibly accommodate.

"We've tried to ensure that this opportunity is spread fairly and evenly across the company."

The flights will last between seven and 15 hours, with routes around Spain, France, the UK, Germany, the Canary Islands and Norway.

'Human feedback'

Employees will be testing seats, air conditioning, meals, in-flight entertainment systems and toilets in first, business and economy class.

Until now, all test flights have been with monitoring equipment instead of real passengers.

Chief test pilot Jacques Rosay said: "These four test flights with real passengers will give us human feedback on life on board this plane, which can do distances of up to 15,000 kilometres (9,300 miles)."

The 555-seater A380 is the world's biggest passenger plane, and the first delivery of the jet will be made to Singapore Airlines in December.

Delivery of the first order has been delayed by six months by production problems.

On Monday, the company announced that Mario Heinen, 50, had been appointed as the new chief executive of the A380 superjumbo programme.

Mr Heinen was previously in charge of the planemaker's single-aisle jet range.

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