Airbus Beluga transport plane celebrated its 20th anniversary of maiden flight on September 13.
The Beluga, named after the white whale due its remarkable shape, is used to carry Airbus aircraft parts and oversized cargo between Airbus's European manufacturing sites.
The five Beluga aircraft fleet is operated by Airbus Transport International (ATI), an Airbus subsidiary airline, and each Beluga crew is composed of a pilot, a co-pilot and a flight engineer.
The Beluga replaced the ageing Lockheed Martin Super Guppy transporters and supplies the Airbus final assembly lines in Toulouse, France and Hamburg, Germany with parts built across Europe. It is also available for charter work.
The multinational Airbus is a consortium formed by the major British, French, German, and Spanish aerospace companies.Each of the Airbus partners makes an entire aircraft section, which is transported to a central location for final assembly.
The Airbus A300-600ST(Super Transporter) or Beluga is based on the Airbus A300-600R widebody airliner with fuselage modification to carry oversized cargos. It is powered by General Electric CF6-80C2 engines. The wings, engines, landing gear, and the lower part of the fuselage are the same as the A300 while the upper part of the fuselage is an enormous horseshoe-shaped structure.
It is 56 m long, 17 m high, with a fuselage diameter of 7.71 m and has a main-deck cargo volume of 1,400m3. The Beluga can carry a maximum payload of 47 metric tonnes non-stop over a range of 1,660 km/900 nm.
Currently more than sixty flights are performed each week between eleven sites, carrying crucial parts for all Airbus aircraft programs. The Beluga fleet targets to double its flight hours from current 5000 to 10000 by 2017.
