'Flight of smile' for Christmas

Airbus offered a year-end holiday present for 50 special-needs passengers from France's Midi-Pyrénées region, which is home to the company's headquarters and its final assembly lines for the A320, A330/A340 and A380. A one-hour trip aboard an A321 was arranged in cooperation with the "Aviation sans Frontières" (Aviation without Borders) organisation, and included a flyover of the Pyrenees mountains and the coastal city of Biarritz. All those taking part were given a special certificate to commemorate the event, along with an A321 scale model. Before boarding the aircraft, the passengers - which included both young people and adults - enjoyed a lunch at Toulouse-Blagnac Airport, and listened to a presentation on the A320 Family from an Airbus flight test team engineer.