Jumbo fit for a prince: The £240million private jet

• Billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud ordered the customised Airbus A380 three years ago
• He already owns a customised 747, an Airbus 231 and a luxury yacht featured in a James Bond film
• Jet will boast luxury suites as well as a prayer room with electronic mats which automatically turn towards mecca 

When you have £16billion in the bank, a Cessna is simply not an option.

Instead, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud is about to take delivery of an Airbus A380, the world’s biggest private jet. 

The same model is used by Singapore Airlines and Emirates and can fly 800 passengers 8,000 miles before refuelling. But the Saudi prince doesn’t need 800 seats, so he will have them removed to make room for an opulent, marble-finished Turkish bath and a parking space for his Rolls-Royce.

Flying palace: An artist's impression of what the £300million customised Superjumbo will look like and a few of the luxuries on board

The plane will even boast a dedicated prayer area, in which computer-generated mats move to point towards Mecca.

The Western-educated prince, 57, is known as the Warren Buffett of the Middle East because of his reputation as a shrewd investor. He also owns 7 per cent of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

The new airliner joins Prince Alwaleed’s stable of private jets, including a modified Boeing 747 and an Airbus 321. He is also the proud owner of a 280ft superyacht, 5KR, formerly owned by Donald Trump, which featured in the Bond film, Never Say Never Again.

Business class: The plane's boardroom features a table which functions as a giant touchscreen and (right) a white spiral staircase winds around the lift which travels three floors and also drops onto the tarmac to act as the prince's private entrance

The new jet, which has already been labelled the Flying Palace, will boast:

• A dazzling main spiral staircase as well as a lift which will travel the plane's three floors and lower onto the tarmac to act as the Prince's private entrance
• A Concert Hall featuring a grand piano, accoustic panelling and seating for an audience of ten. Big name entertainers are expected to perform.
• A Hamam steam room lined with marble only two millimetres thick to keep the weight down as well as a sensory area for treatments
• A magnificent Wellbeing room for guests featuring a giant screen on the floor allowing them to see what they are flying over
• A full size boardroom featuring a large perspex table which doubles as a huge touchscreen
• A total of five luxury suites as well as a prayer room with electronic mats which automatically turn to face mecca  
• Ample parking space for a Rolls Royce   

 

Night flight: The opulent jet will boast no fewer than four luxury suites as well as a prayer room with electronic mats that automatically turn to face mecca while (right) the stunning Wellbeing room for guests will feature a giant screen on the floor allowing them to see what they are flying over

Giant of the skies: The Airbus A380 is the world's largest airliner and has been designed to carry over 600 passengers. The basic cost is £135 million but Prince Alwaleed's plane is expected to top £300million 

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is the region's wealthiest man

Airbus will deliver the extravagant toy to the prince in the New Year, a spokesman confirmed.
The prince is the first person to buy one of the luxury jumbos, estimated to have cost £240million. 


The spokesman said: ‘This is the most up-to-date model you can get and the largest civil aircraft ever. It’s huge – half again as big as a 747.’ 


The Airbus will be delivered to the prince ‘green’ – a basic shell ready to be furnished to the client’s desires. 

Design Q, the company working on the interior, says the A380 is ‘not only the most luxurious aircraft in existence, but also reflects the cultural values and status of its owner’. 

The plane boasts the equivalent of three tennis courts’ worth of floor space, while the lowest cargo deck also has ample parking room. 

A grand white spiral staircase will greet guests in the entrance hall. 


On arrival a lift drops to the runway and a red carpet unfurls, with downlights to ‘give the impression of turning up at the Oscars’, according to Design Q.

The belly of the A380 has been turned into a relaxation zone, including a Turkish bath lined with marble only 2mm thick to keep the weight down.

Next door is a wellbeing room, with the floor and walls turned into a giant screen showing the ground below. 

Guests can stand on a ‘magic carpet’ and watch the journey, a scented breeze blowing into the room.

There are also about 20 ‘sleepers’ – the equivalent of First Class seats – a boardroom and a concert hall.

As the largest stakeholder in News Corp outside the Murdoch Family, Prince Alalweed was interviewed on the deck of his yacht in Cannes by the BBC following the phone tapping scandal.

Looking relaxed in a pair of shorts and sunglasses he famously declared that News Corp's then chief executive Rebekah Brooks 'has to go', which many believe effectively ended Brooks's career at the company.

A spokesman for Design Q, the Worcestershire-based company who will be carrying out the customisation of the plane, told the Independent the plane would be 'not only the most luxurious aircraft in existence, but also reflects the cultural values and status of its owner.'

Mayan doomsday

  - 12 ways the world could end tomorrow

Friday ... end of the world?

THE Apocalypse could be just a day away – and a Sun investigation can now reveal the top 12 end-of-the world scenarios.

The ancient Mayan civilisation’s 5,125-year-old Long Count calendar ends on Friday December 21 – and doom mongers across the world are predicting global oblivion. 

It is not known exactly how the Doomsday will come about but experts have speculated that a deadly alien invasion, catastrophic meteorite collision and even the Large Hadron Collider – just over the English Channel could destroy the Earth as we know it. 

Here Alice Everley explores the 12 chilling ways we could perish. 

Are we doomed? ... Chitchen Itza in Yucatan penisula of Mexico, once home to the ancient Mayan civilisations

 

1 METEORITE COLLISION 
 
ASTEROID expert Austen Atkinson says the chances of a serious meteorite strike on Earth are very small but the consequences would be catastrophic. Asteroids near Earth travel at between 20 and 30 kilometres per second, making them both hard to intercept and hard to see. If a 500-metre wide asteroid hits the water, a tsunami several miles in height could wipe out all humanity.
2 FLU PANDEMIC 
 
DEADLY flu pandemics happen irregularly but are very dangerous and destructive. The most serious pandemic in recent history was the ruthless and deadly 1918 Spanish flu. It spread all the way to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands, claiming the lives of as many as 50MILLION people. Scientists believe that the next pandemic is not a matter of if but when. 

3 MASS RADIATION EXPLOSION FROM THE SUN 
 
THE sun releases huge amounts of matter and radiation, releasing bursts of solar wind and magnetic fields into space. Those particles cause strong aurorae that we know as Northern Lights in the North Pole and Southern Lights in Antarctica. But intense cosmic rays from a mega-powerful ejection could cause anything from massive long-lasting power outages to fatal exposure to humans by blowing a massive hole in the Ozone layer. 

Sun matter ... Northern Lights

 

4 RELIGIOUS APOCALYPSE 
 
MOST religions predict some variation of a Judgement Day. In Christianity it will supposedly happen after the resurrection of the dead and the second coming of Jesus Christ. In Islam, Yawm ad-Din is believed to be God’s final assessment of humanity, going hand-in-hand with annihilation of all creatures, resurrection of the body and the judgement of all. The exact timescale of the predicted apocalypse is unknown. 

5 SUPERVOLCANO 
 
A SUPERVOLCANO is capable of producing an eruption of a scale thousands of times larger than a normal volcano. Continental hotspots conceal huge flat-lying invisible supervolcanoes, where a massive magma pool would be growing underground and could explode. The famous active Yellowstone supervolcano in Idaho is 50 miles across and could cause destruction over a 1,000-mile plus radius - causing potential extinction. 

Sleeping monster ... supervolcano

 

6 CATACLYSMIC POLE SHIFT 
 
SCIENTISTS suggest the Earth had experienced shifts in relative positions of the modern-day geographic locations of the poles. If the poles shifted rapidly, it could lead to cataclysmic events, such as devastating floods and tectonic plate shifts associated with earthquakes and volcano eruptions. 

7 ALIEN INVASION 
 
EXTRA-TERRESTRIALS invading our planet have been a constant fear over the last century. Believers suggest aliens have been living among us for a long time, infiltrating the world’s population by pretending to be human. On December 21st doom mongers say we could expect anything from an alien invasion - wiping out mankind or extra-terrestrials depleting the planet’s resources and destroying the Earth. 

Invasion ... aliens

 

8 NUCLEAR WAR/WW3 
 
THE Cold War is over, but the threat is still very real – think North Korea’s long-range rocket launched just this week heightening international tensions and fears the rogue state could be building up to a nuclear capability.

9 ICE AGE 
 
GRADUAL climate change in the shape of global warming is well-known but an abrupt climate change is a distinct possibility, some scientists say. Global warming may reduce the warm winds blowing from the tropics – causing a big imbalance in temperatures within the Northern hemisphere with the environmental consequences unknown and potentially fatal. 

Chilling ... Ice Age

 

10 RISE OF THE MACHINES 
 
SUPER artificial intelligence with the view to a kill could be hiding among us waiting to strike, some conspiracy theorists have suggested. The chances of a big plot attempting to conceal such technological progress from humans are slim. But let’s face it, if they are capable of taking over the world on December 21st, they wouldn’t be reckless enough for us to notice before they’re all set, would they? 

11 TIME TRAVEL ERROR 
 
TIME travel geeks believe someone from the future could have ventured into our past and caused a conflict in the time-space continuum. This, they argue, could be how the Mayans got their mysterious calendar in the first place. The Mayan time-traveller could then have zipped back in time and warned the ancients all about the apocalypse.

12 LARGE HADRON COLLIDER (LHC) 
 
SCIENTISTS from 60 countries have been working 250ft underground on the project trying to recreate conditions after the Big Bang 14billion years ago. Some still fear there is a chance the powerful machine could generate mini black holes which could grow and instantly swallow our planet. They even tried to get the European Court of Human Rights to stop the tests.