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Aviation History
2001
2001 - 0060.PDF
AIRBUS AT THIRTY A fleet of Beluga's transport sub-assemblies between Airbus plants installed at the Hamburg centre of excellence. It is also clear, however, that this decision resulted from the extremely tough negotiations on workshares and final assembly site. BELUGA TRANSPORT Unique to the Airbus production system is the means by which aircraft pieces manufactured by the partners are transported from the sites of original manufacture to Toulouse. The con verted propeller-powered Boeing 377 Strato- cruiser "Super Guppies" have now been replaced by the far larger Beluga, based on an A3 00-600 airframe with the top of its fuselage replaced with a huge section which is claimed to provide the biggest cargo hold available in the world. As well as having enough space to accommodate the wings of the new A3 3 0/A340 and larger fuselage sections, the Beluga obvi ously flies faster, increasing the efficiency of the system and reducing costs. A further evolution for the A3 80 is on the cards, which will see the entire aircraft trans ported to Toulouse by ship, barge and truck. "We began studying the options in 1996 when we made the first sketches of the A3 80 to ensure it was actually buildable," says Jesus Morales, vice-president of manufacturing for Airbus' IJU—^j"—c^—*3*—lv j *y v 4) Production across the two single-aisle lines in Hamburg (above) and Toulouse is heading to 30 a month large aircraft division. It was soon decided that the centres of competence would stay, although he insists that the theme throughout was to allow total flexibility in the decision-making process. "We were dealing with something quite different from our previous aircraft in terms of size. But we knew the centres of com petence had worked well in the past and that it would be extremely difficult to change it." The main decision then was in what form the sections should be built at those centres for shipment to Toulouse. "We looked at all of die possible scenarios, including building the fuse lage sections in either half or whole barrels," says Morales. "All our analyses indicated that it was easier to build them in whole sections, as we do with our existing aircraft." One of the main drivers, he says, was the difficulties posed by mating half sections built as an integrated whole with the floor sections, "which made an extremely rigid structure that would have been difficult, if not impossible, to align". The decision meant that Airbus was faced with transporting to Toulouse huge, complete fuselage sections weighing up to 44t, along with complete wing shipsets weighing 3 31. The stud ies were so wide-ranging that Airbus looked at transporting the wings atop a converted A340 - an idea that was quickly rejected as impractical. A3 80 sections will be delivered to the final assembly line fully equipped and mounted on special jigs, to which they will remain attached throughout the journey. The process will begin at Airbus' Hamburg site with the loading of for ward and rear fuselage sections onto a purpose- built Airbus roll-on/roll-off vessel. "We think we'll need two ships and they will be leased," says Morales. The ship will berth atMostyn in the UK to pick up a shipset of wings built at the Broughton plant, and then sail on to St Nazaire, where the forward fuselage will be unloaded for mating with the French-built cockpit section. It will be replaced with an already mated cock pit/forward fuselage section and joined by die centre section, also built at St Nazaire. FINAL TOUCHES The ship, now carrying the entire A3 80 fuselage in three sections, will continue on to Bordeaux, where the horizontal tailplane and belly fairing will have arrived from Airbus Spain. The entire aircraft shipset will then be loaded onto either two or three roll-on/roll-off barges for trans port to the highest navigable point upstream on the Garonne river, about 80km inland, for transfer to specially built road vehicles. The remaining 200km will be travelled by night, on secondary roads, the sections being delivered to the new A3 80 Aeroconstellation complex at Toulouse. The entire process will be repeated weekly to meet Airbus' planned four- per-month production rate for the A3 80. Under current planning, the A3 80 will have its maiden flight in summer 2004, with die first section arriving in late 2003. "We're ordering long-lead tooling already," says Morales. • 58 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 2 - 8 January 2001
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