Thousands turned up to gawk at the double-decker Airbus A380 jumbo airliner, snarling traffic in the vicinity of the airport. The German airline Lufthansa owns the craft, which arrived at about 2.45 pm, and was scheduled to continue its training run at 5.00 o’clock.
According to Finavia the event was unprecedented as no Finnish airport has ever received a passenger aircraft of the size and class of the A380.
Thousands of aviation enthusiasts and plane spotters arrived to take up positions on a small hill at the end of the runway to view the vessel during touchdown. As an exception, the plane was directed to land on runway 2 so that it could be seen from many different vantage points.
Curious onlookers even resorted to parking on the Tuusula road to take a gander at the plane, causing traffic bottlenecks around the airport.
The A380 made stops in Copenhagen and Stockholm before cruising into Helsinki, and continued on to Oslo before returning home to Frankfurt.
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