Airbus beluga

Very few among us get a chance to actually get into the plane, and even fewer get a sight of the jumbo jets and air buses which have recently been ruling the kingdom of air. Today we will be looking at one such air bus which never stops amazing the people who look at it. The standard A300-600 airbus which is a wide-body airliner modified in order to be able to carry parts of an aircraft and cargo of bigger and bigger sizes. It is called as Airbus A300-600ST or Super Transporter and also known as Airbus Beluga. Even though it is officially named as Super Transporter, it is popularly known as Beluga and, it's been adopted as an official name.

As we know, world's most huge aircraft developing companies are scattered across the globe. However, Airbus on the other hand, was a consortium created by the major British, French, German and Spanish aerospace companies. After the consortium as formed, every country which was a part of the team agreed to fully develop a single part of the airbus which then can be assembled. All of these parts would be finally transported to a central location, where final assembly would be performed. Generally United Kingdom takes care of manufacturing of the landing gear and wings. Germany handles the task of fuselage, Tails and doors are manufactured in Spain. France handles the making of center-section and the nose. Right after all the parts are developed, they are gathered either in Toulouse or Hamburg of France and Germany respectively for the final assembly.

It was in 1970 when airbus first started. During those days, the components of an airbus were delivered by road, but when the production started shooting sky high, there was an inevitable need for switching to air transport. Thus from 1972 onwards, a team of 4 modified 'Super Guppies' became in charge. Actually these were formerly the Boeing Stratocruisers (1940s), which are converted using the custom turbine engines and fuselages to carry loads of large volumes. These were used in the NASA program of 1960s. In 1991, 2 major Airbus partners DASA and Aerospatiale, joined hands together to replace the oldies in Boeings and started the design for the twin-engine wide-body Airbus A300. This is completely similar to A300 with regard to the landing gear, engines and the wings, but in case of fuselage, it's an enormously spacious horseshoe shaped structure with a diameter of 7.7 meter. It also has flight control connections and hydraulics to provide an access to the cargo, from the front. This Airbus was made special by shifting down the cockpit below the level of cargo and the doors fitted to this airbus are 17m high. Totally 56.15 meter in length and17.24m in height and wings spanning a length of 44.84, and it is capable of carrying 155 tons; when you have lot of money, Airbus wouldn't mind taking 80 kg more.

Linus Orakles
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