FRENCH aerospace company Airbus SE that makes the world’s largest passenger aircraft – the A380 that’s flown by numerous international airlines to Australia – is building five huge new airfreighters that will move outsize aircraft parts as large as fuselage sections, and entire wings and tails from makers world-wide, to Toulouse in France and Hamburg in Germany, where Airbus has assembly centres that put its new planes together.
And so big will these monster new Airbus BelugaXL freighters be that they will be able to carry up to fifty-three tons of aircraft parts at a time from supplier plants in several European countries, the UK and even China and the USA, to those assembly centres.
Each of the new Belugas, the first of which will go into service in 2019, will be capable of flying some 30 per cent more cargo than Airbus’s existing airfreighters, and do so in single hops of up to 4,000 kilometres.
Named Beluga because of the resemblance of their nose sections to the head of the Arctic’s white Beluga whales, Airbus has had a bit of fun in going even further in giving its new airfreighters painted-on “eyes” and a grinning “mouth,” as it admits the voluminous raw aeroplanes will not be the most beautiful in the sky.
BUT given a bit of a paint job with “eyes” and a grinning “mouth,” they will take on a whole new personality, as this artist’s impression shows. (Airbus SE)
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