By IPS Correspondents
ABU DHABI, Mar 4 2003 (IPS)

The Emirates Airline, will form part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) major presence next week at the ITB, the international tourism exhibition in the German capital Berlin.

The world’s largest and most high-profile travel exhibition will next week play host to the public debut of this new show-stopping Emirates display stand – custom-built to showcase what in three years time will become the world’s largest airline, according to reports in the UAE dailies.

Top German state TV show Morgenmagazin is set to broadcast live from the stand on the morning of March 7, from 5.30 a.m. to 9 a.m., bringing footage of Emirates and the emirates of Dubai to the breakfast TV screens of millions of German homes.

The 21-ton stand will be the biggest aircraft model ever built inside an exhibition hall. It will place the award-winning Dubai-based airline center stage with thousands of influential travel industry visitors at ITB.

The – nose cone" will be covered in see-through gauze to help visitors visualize the inside of the mighty aircraft. It will stand more than nine meters tall, yet is supported by a single nose wheel.

Originally intended as a life-sized model of the front cabin of an Airbus A380, the giant 575-seat double decker aircraft which will form the backbone of Emirates’ fleet for much of this century, it had to be scaled down to 90 percent of its actual size to fit it into Berlin’s huge Messe exhibition hall.

Mike Simon, Emirates’ Corporate Communications Director, said: "We briefed Pulse Group, our designers, to highlight our considerable investment in the A380 with a model which would incorporate our core values of quality, innovation and forward-thinking. The new aircraft will have two particularly memorable aspects – its enormous size and the two complete passenger decks running throughout its full length."

He added: "Our model had to be as close in size to the real thing as possible to give an impression of its huge presence."

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