The 555-seat double-deck test aircraft landed at the OR Tambo International Airport, Africa's busiest airport, shortly after 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) on Sunday from Toulouse in France.

The superjumbo has successfully conducted several auto landing trials, and is expected to undertake a series of refueling, docking and other exercises during the day, before departing for Sydney, Australia, on Monday morning.

The journey to Johannesburg "marked the beginning of the fourth and last part of A380's technical route proving exercise," European aircraft manufacturer Airbus said in a press release.

The visit is part of an 18-day trip to 10 different airports around the world to test operations before Airbus seeks an air safety certificate for the A380 in mid December from European and U.S. aviation authorities.

It will fly over the South Pole en-route to Sydney where it will arrive on Tuesday. From Sydney, it will fly across the Pacific to Vancouver, Canada, prior to returning to Airbus headquarters in Toulouse via the North Pole.

Welcoming the superjumbo's first landing on the African soil, South African Transport Minister Jeff Radebe said 512 million rand(71 million U.S. dollars) were being invested specifically for theA380-realted upgrades at the airport.

These include the expansion of runways to 60-meter wide and taxiways to 30-meter wide, as well as construction of nine aircraft stands, four of which have been built specifically to accommodate the A380 with dual air bridges to load and offload passengers from the double-deck aircraft.

A total of 3.5 billion rand (490 million dollars) will be invested to upgrade the OR Tambo International Airport before 2010,when South Africa hosts the FIFA World Cup. Cape Town International Airport will also be reconfigured to accommodate theA380.

Edouard Ullmo, executive vice president of Airbus, said the company viewed Africa as a fast-growing market of aviation and the2010 World Cup in South Africa would be a huge boost to this market.

"International aviation volume in Africa has increased by 38percent in the past five years and we will see a big surge of air travelers in 2010, like what happened during the 1988 Olympics in South Korea," he told Xinhua in a press conference on Sunday.

Although none of African airlines has made an order for A380,Ullmo said Airbus would be ready to meet the demand.

Airbus is facing possible order cancellations from customers due to failure to meet delivery deadlines. The first A380, which costs around 230 million dollars, is scheduled to be delivered to Singapore Airlines in the fourth quarter of 2007.

South Africa is the only African stop for the much-expected test flight of the A380, which is 73m long and has a wingspan of79.8 m. Its height is 24.1m and its fuselage is 7.14m in diameter.

The A380 has visited Singapore, Seoul, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai in the previous test flights starting from Nov. 13.