Great Circle Mapper |
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Featured Map: Final Airbus BelugaXL Finally Enters Service
On Monday, the last of six Airbus BelugaXL (A330-743L) aircraft joined the Airbus Transport International (ATI) fleet. This aircraft was actually the first BelugaXL—it rolled out of the factory on 4 January 2018 before making its first flight on 19 July 2018, but the aircraft was retained as a testbed while its five subsequent siblings went to work. With its test work completed it has been turned over to the job of transporting sub-assemblies and components between various Airbus facilities in Europe. (With a range of 4,000 km or 2,200 nmi, the BelugaXL does not have the range to reach Airbus Final Assembly Lines in Tianjin, China and Mobile, Alabama.)
The BelugaXL is based on the A330-200F, and is a successor to the BelugaST (A300B4-608ST), of which five were built. The BelugaXT can carry a pair of A350 wings whereas the BelugaST could carry just one. Airbus plans 6,500 flight hours for the BelugaXL fleet in 2024, expanding to 9,500 flight hours by 2027. Special loading facilities at the factories allow turnaround time between missions to average just 70 minutes.
Today's Featured Map shows were the five working BelugaXL aircraft have flown over the past three months. As is common with cargo operations, creating an informative map requires some artistry since routes are often asymmetric. For this network, the Great Circle Mapper's default geodesic paths produced a cluttered and ugly map for these short trips, so B�zier paths were used, which still require quite a bit of tinkering to produce an aesthetic map.
A key feature of this network is that its primary operation is transport of sub-assemblies and components to the primary Airbus Final Assembly Line (FAL) at Toulouse (Blagnac) and to the second single-aisle FAL at Hamburg (Finkenwerder). The path between the two airports, the busiest for the BelugaXL, is shown in red, which is (almost) common between the flags of France and Germany. Other paths to Toulouse are shown in France's dark blue whilst paths to Hamburg are shown in Bavarian blue. (No, Hamburg is not in Bavaria, but the gold from Germany's flag didn't work as well. Artistic license!)
Other routes are shown in thin green lines. Occasional flights from Toulouse to Ingolstadt, which were only flown in that direction, were probably ferry flights to get aircraft in position to transport components to Hamburg. The other "green line" flights may have been carrying components as they otherwise don't make much sense.
The facilities in this map serve a variety of functions:
- Toulouse (Blagnac), France
- Final Assembly Line (FAL) for all Airbus aircraft.
- Hamburg (Finkenwerder), Germany
- Originally the FAL for A320-family aircraft other than the A320 itself, along with finishing and test for widebody aircraft, Hamburg is now an FAL for all A320neo-family aircraft.
- Getafe, Spain
- Airbus' third largest site, where work includes assembly and testing of the horizontal stabilisers for the A320, A330, and A350, plus the tail cone of the A350.
- St-Nazaire (Montoir), France
- This site is responsible for the assembly, equipping, and testing of the forward sections of all Airbus commercial aircraft except the A220 (and center sections of the A330 and, previously, the A380).
- Chester (Broughton), England, UK
- The sites at Filton and Broughton design, test, and manufacture the wings for all Airbus aircraft except the A380.
- Bremen, Germany
- This site is responsible for the design, manufacture, integration and testing of high-lift systems for the wings of Airbus aircraft.
- Ingolstadt (Manching), Germany
- Airbus documents various work in Bavaria at Ingolstadt, and at the German System Support Center Eurofighter (SUZ EF) in Manching, but none obviously justify the significant number of BelugaXL flights to Hamburg.
- Nantes, France
- Nantes produces center wing boxes for all Airbus commercial aircraft along with various other components.
- Albert-Picardie Airport, France
- Various components from Airbus' nearby M�aulte factory are transported from this French airport.
Airbus mentions 11 European destinations for the BelugaXL but the remaining two are unclear, and apparently infrequently visited by the BelugaXL.
References and additional information:
Information on this site may not be accurate or current and is not valid for flight planning or navigation. No warranty of fitness for any purpose is made or implied. Flight planning and navigation should only be done using official charts.
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Karl L. Swartz.
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