The busiest airport in Virginia now serves the fleet of commercial planes that rank as the largest in the world. Washington Dulles International Airport on Monday became the first Washington-area airport to welcome Air France's Airbus A380, a double-decker plane that can fit more than 850 passengers and dwarfs the normally impressive Boeing 747 jets in wingspan, height and cabin environment. Travelers can now purchase tickets for the flight, which lands at 1 p.m. every day in Dulles and takes off at 4:40 p.m. A round-trip ticket bought a week before departure will cost about $2,000, compared to roughly $1,800 on a conventional 747. The Airbus replaces smaller aircraft that fly the route between Dulles and Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport in France, said Robert Yingling, spokesman for Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. The benefit to Dulles is the jets “increase capacity to a major European gateway,” he said. Paris is the second-most-popular international destination for people leaving from the D.C. area, behind London. About 200,000 passengers each year fly from Dulles to Paris, Yingling said.
