| Testing of “World’s Most Famous Plane” in Canada’s Arctic Region |
 By William Atkinson
Iqaluit, Nunavut, is on Canada’s Baffin Island, at the confluence of Polar Route One and the high latitude North Atlantic routes. Air carriers travel regularly today from North America to the Orient on Polar Route One. In recent years, Iqaluit Airport has also served as a cold-weather testing facility for new aircraft. Its location in the Arctic desert — where winter temperatures are regularly -30oC in very dry air — and its enormous infrastructure make it an ideal site. Companies such as Airbus, Boeing, Eurocopter, and Bombardier, to mention a few, take advantage of Nunavut’s winter climate to put aircraft through their paces in the extremely cold conditions.
Iqaluit was selected for the cold-weather testing of the Airbus A380-800 in 2005, after computer modeling of the runway and craft dimensions demonstrated that the airport could accommodate the airliner’s huge dimensions. The big new jet airliner arrived in Iqaluit on February 6, 2006, from Toulouse, France. Its tail is eight-stories tall, and it has a wingspan of 80 meters. The aircraft, weighing a million pounds, became the heaviest commercial airliner ever to land in North America.
For five days the team of 55 Airbus engineers and flight test crew experienced some of the most difficult working conditions imaginable as they put the aircraft through performance tests in the icy conditions. Due to the extremely cold conditions, the Airbus team in Iqaluit was almost double the size of teams used on previous A380 tests. The team consisted of two groups that worked four-hour rotating shifts to limit their exposure to the cold. The trials included sequenced powering up of the flight test installation equipment, the aircraft, the engines and hydraulic systems following 12-hour cold-soak periods. The batteries were taken away overnight and reinstalled onboard the aircraft for the tests. Two taxi and two flight tests were conducted in the cold weather conditions to see how the engines and other systems responded. All the tests were done as part of the certification process for the aircraft and to prove full functionality of the systems under extreme weather conditions.
“The first flight to North America by the A380 garnered huge interest by both the general and aviation media, and put Iqaluit and its airport on the world stage. The A380 arrival in Iqaluit was a milestone in the airport’s history and a milestone for Canadian aviation,” said Airport Director John Graham. “Meanwhile, life goes on as normal at Iqaluit airport,” Graham said. “The only thing different is that we have the most famous plane in the world operating here.”
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