China Southern Airlines' first A380 has been fitted with its impressive 122 m2 all composite vertical tail plane on September 14th 2010 at Airbus' A380 Final Assembly Line in Toulouse (France).

It takes about eight hours to install the tail at station 40, the position where the A380 major sections including the wings are fitted together. The tail is almost equivalent to the size of an A320 wing and when joined to the fuselage its tip stands 24 metres from the ground.

China Southern Airlines will become a new A380 operator in 2011 and has a total order for five A380s.