Airbus Beluga - WikiHQ

The Airbus A300-600ST (Super Transporter) or Beluga is a specialised wide-body airliner used to transport aircraft parts and outsize cargoes. It received the official name of Super Transporter early on, but its nickname, after the beluga whale, which it resembles, gained popularity and has since been officially adopted.

Due to Airbus's manufacturing facilities being dispersed, the company had a long term need to transport sizeable components, such as wings and fuselage sections, to their final assembly lines. This had been met by a small fleet of Aero Spacelines "Super Guppies", but these aircraft were aged and increasingly maintenance-intensive to keep in operation. While several different existing aircraft were studied, none were found to be fully satisfactory. Instead, the company came to favour developing a derivative of its standard A300-600. In August 1991, a new joint venture company, Super Airbus Transport International (SATIC), was formed to pursue the venture.

Construction of the first aircraft began during September 1992; it performed its maiden flight on 13 September 1994. Entering service in September 1995, the Super Transporter was a larger, faster, and more efficient aircraft than the preceding Super Guppies. A total of five aircraft were built for Airbus; while additional new-build aircraft were offered to prospective operators by SATIC during the 1990s, no other customers ordered the type. In addition to its primary task of conveying Airbus components, the Super Transporter fleet has occasionally been used for charter flights, carrying outsized cargoes for various customers and purposes, from whole helicopters to industrial equipment and humanitarian aid. On 25 January 2022, Airbus announced a service offering outsize cargo transportation using its Beluga fleet.

During the 2010s, Airbus developed a slightly larger successor, the BelugaXL, based on the Airbus A330-200. This fleet, which entered service in January 2020, is intended to eventually replace the original Beluga fleet, which was entering its third decade. The first aircraft was retired in January 2026; the others are expected to be withdrawn from service by 2027. Airbus' use of the Super Guppies led to the jest that "every Airbus is delivered on the wings of a Boeing". Over time, the Super Guppies grew increasingly unsatisfactory for Airbus's ferrying needs: their age meant that operating expenses were high and ever-increasing, and growing Airbus production required greater capacity than could be provided by the existing fleet.

Various options were studied to serve as a replacement transport medium for the Super Guppies, including methods of surface transportation by road, rail, and sea; these alternatives were discarded in favour of a principally air-based solution as they were considered time-consuming and unreliable; in addition, the assembly line in Toulouse was not conveniently accessible by any of the surface methods.

In November 2014, Airbus announced that it was proceeding with the development of a larger replacement based on the Airbus A330-200, planning to replace the BelugaST fleet entirely by 2025. The BelugaXL entered service in 2020. Airbus previously considered the A330-300 and A340-500, but each required too much of the limited runway at Hawarden Airport near Broughton in Wales. In May 2015, Airbus confirmed that the new aircraft would have a wider cross-section than its predecessor and provide a 12% increase in payload. The BelugaXL is intended primarily for A350 work, designed to ship two A350 wings simultaneously. The first two aircraft were considered essential to facilitate mass production of the A350, while the following aircraft were to be progressively introduced as the A300-600 Beluga fleet was withdrawn.

Design

thumb|right|The cargo space of Beluga, F-GSTC; AirExpo 2008, Toulouse Francazal Airport, France

thumb|upright=1|Upward-swinging hinged doorThe A300-600ST Beluga shares many design similarities, although differing substantially in appearance, to the Airbus A300 upon which it was based. Despite this width, the Beluga cannot carry most fuselage parts of the Airbus A380, which are instead normally transported by ship and road; nevertheless, some A380 components have been transported by Belugas.

Operational history

thumb|A BelugaST in early livery, 2003

thumb|Fuselage nose sections being unloaded at Hamburg Finkenwerder, 2013

In January 1996, the Beluga formally entered service, ferrying components from various aerospace sites to the final assembly lines. The geographic location of Airbus manufacturing is not only influenced by cost and convenience; it is also a matter of aviation history and national interests. Traditionally, each of the Airbus partners makes an entire aircraft section, which would then be transported to a central location for final assembly; even after the integration of Airbus into a single firm, the arrangement had largely remained the same, with Airbus partners becoming subsidiaries or contractors of the multinational pan-European company. The details vary from one model to another, but the general arrangement is for the wings and landing gear to be made in the UK, the tail and doors in Spain, the fuselage in Germany, and the nose and centre-section in France, with final assembly in either Toulouse, France; Hamburg, Germany; or Seville, Spain.

On 24 October 1997, the last of Airbus's Super Guppy freighters was retired and its outsize cargo mission from that point onwards being exclusively performed by the new A300-600ST fleet. In 2015, a dedicated Beluga loading station was opened at Hawarden Airport, preventing high winds from disrupting future operations. A two-bay loading dock was opened in Toulouse in 2019, receiving 85–100 flights per week, as the five A300-600STs are operated 7,600 hours a year together. By enclosing the forward section, including the open large cargo door, a faster one hour and 20 minutes turnaround, down from two hours and 30 minutes, could be achieved, along with reduced weather-related restrictions.

In addition to its primary supply duties to Airbus' production facilities, Belugas have often performed charter flights for various purposes. In 1997, ATI claimed that it had to reject eight out of ten requests for commercial Beluga flights, the fleet being able to spare only 130 flight hours for such duties that year. which had hung in the Louvre in Paris since 1874. It was flown from Paris to Tokyo via Bahrain and Kolkata in about 20 hours. The large canvas, measuring high by long,

The Beluga has seen recurrent use to transport bulky objects, including vehicles, for various different space programs. In 2004, multiple Beluga flights were made to Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, to deliver Astrium-built satellites.

On 25 January 2022, Airbus announced an airline offering outsize cargo transportation called Airbus Beluga Transport. The airline was established as an alternative use for the Beluga fleet, after it was withdrawn from Airbus’s internal logistics network following the introduction of the BelugaXL. Airbus Beluga Transport saw demand after sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 affected Russian-operated Antonov An-124 services and the destruction of the sole Antonov An-225; the company stated that it foresaw in excess of 150 such flights being performed annually. In September 2022, Airbus began testing a new loading system for handling outsized military cargo with the BelugaST fleet. A verification exercise was conducted with the German armed forces, the system's first customer, during which a Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion military transport helicopter was loaded into a Beluga. In January 2025, Airbus decided to close its Beluga Transport operations after just 14 months of getting its own AOC.

Specifications (A300-600ST)

350px|Layout of A300-600ST Beluga