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Transport of major aircraft sections

Production Final assembly and tests 

Airbus’ own airlifter fleet

Airbus’ fleet of A300-600ST Super Transporters provide the rapid transport for major sections of its single-aisle and widebody aircraft
Airbus’ fleet of A300-600ST Super Transporters provides the rapid transport for major sections of its single-aisle and widebody aircraft.

Airbus has developed its own transportation system to airlift the large, pre-assembled sections of its jetliners from their production locations to final assembly lines in Toulouse and Hamburg.  This service is performed by a fleet of five A300-600ST Super Transporters. 

These modified A300-600s, nicknamed the ‘Beluga’, have a bulbous main-deck cargo cabin which enables the loading of complete fuselage sections and wings of single-aisle, long-range  and future A350 XWB aircraft.

Operated by Airbus Transport International, the Super Transporter is able to carry a 47 metric tonne (103,616 lb.) payload over a range of 900 nautical miles (1,667 km.). 

Focus: A380 multimode transport

The A380’s size means its fuselage and wing sections are shipped via a surface transportation network that includes specially-commissioned roll-on roll-off ships to carry these sections from production sites in France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom to the French city of Bordeaux. From there, sections are transported by barge along the Garonne River to the Toulouse final assembly line.

As for other Airbus aircraft programmes, production of the A380 takes place in different sites across Europe. Each site produces completely equipped sections, which are transported to final assembly .

Most A380 sections are transported to Toulouse by sea, river and road. A number of smaller components, such as the vertical fin produced in Stade or the nose section produced in Meaulte, France, are carried in Airbus’ Beluga fleet.

Shipping aircraft sections

A specially-designed Airbus river barge carries an A380 fuselage and aft section through Bordeaux, France, on their way to the final assembly line in Toulouse.
A specially-designed Airbus river barge carries an A380 fuselage and aft section through Bordeaux, France, on their way to the final assembly line in Toulouse.

All large A380 sections are transported by truck from inland production sites to the nearest river or sea port. 

Wings, for example, travel by barge along the River Dee from Broughton in North Wales to the Dee estuary, where they are loaded onto a large capacity roll-on roll-off vessel. The craft is used to move aircraft sections by sea to the French port of Pauillac, near Bordeaux. 

Here, the components are transferred to specially designed barges, which carry them on the penultimate part of their 95 km voyage up the Garonne river from Pauillac to Langon. Four river journeys are required to transport fuselage sections and the horizontal tail plane of one aircraft.

In Langon, aircraft sections are transferred to outsized-load trucks to complete their journey to Toulouse by road.

Watch the A380 components travel by road, river and sea to Toulouse from a number of production locations across Europe.
Production How is an aircraft built? Final assembly and tests