This INSANE "WHALE" cargo plane is REAL - But Why?

The Airbus Beluga cargo plane is a special cargo conversion used by Airbus to transport aircraft shells from their manufacturing sites across Europe to the final assembly centers in France.

In this video today we are going to explore the history of the type, why Airbus built it, and what the future is for one of the strangest aircraft flying in the world today. And watch to the very end for a little surprise!

Being a new company with a new aircraft built across the continent, the general arrangement is for the wings and landing gear to be made in the UK, the tail and doors in Spain, the fuselage in Germany, and the nose and center-section in France, with final assembly in either Toulouse, France; Hamburg, Germany; or Seville, Spain. Thus Airbus looked for multiple ways to bring a multi-site construction project together. The solution came in 1974 with a highly modified Boeing Stratocruiser, dubbed the Super Guppy.

The fuselage was lengthened to 141 feet (43 m), and ballooned out to a maximum inside diameter of 25 ft (7.6 m), the length of the cargo compartment being 111 ft 6 in (34.0 m). The aircraft had a maximum load of 52,500 lb (23,800 kg). These planes had originally been created to transport the third stage of the Saturn V rocket but would go on to be used by Airbus to transport parts of the A300.

Airbus had four of these aircraft, run by a subsidiary called Airbus Transport International (ATI). Technically it's not an airline, as its just a transport from within the Airbus production line - but believe it or not, they make around $15 million a year from external charters! Back to the story

When the A320 became more popular, and Airbus launched the A330 and A340 programs, they knew that the four super guppies were not going to be able to keep up. their age meant that operating expenses were high and ever-increasing, and growing Airbus production required greater capacity than could be provided by the existing fleet. Thus they looked at their own lineup for a new cargo aircraft - settling on the Airbus A300 platform.

This would be the first A300-600ST Super Transporter or Beluga ST aircraft, and five would be built!

To build these, Airbus would actually take a half-built A300 and cut it half. Why? Bertrand George, head of Beluga XL program said , “ the airframe had already been reinforced in certain areas and, in these days of composite materials, a traditional metal structure was easier to convert, the latter being important to achieving entry into service of the first aircraft".

And this plane would be much bigger than the super guppy. The A300-600ST's freight compartment is 7.4 m (24 ft) in diameter and 37.7 m (124 ft) long; the maximum payload is 47 tonnes.

By 2013, Airbus will be producing A320 Family aircraft at a rate of 60 per month across its four final assembly lines in Toulouse, Hamburg, Mobile, AL, and Tianjin, as well as at least 10 of its new aircraft, the A350s, per month.

However there was a problem with the existing Beluga aircraft - they could not transport an entire A350 in on flight. Airbus needed a new aircraft to perform this role, one that was bigger and more powerful. Airbus considered the Antonov An-124 and Boeing C-17 (Dreamlifter).

It also needed to instantly fit into existing infrastructure, such as hangers, the airports Airbus used, and use the same maintenance facilities. Thus Airbus looked at the A330 platform. The A340 was considered, but it would be too big to fit on the shorter runway at Hawarden Airport near Broughton in Wales.. Airbus would put aside a small budget of 1 billion euros fro the project, for development and production. they would call the project the A330-743L, or Beluga XL!

The Beluga XL cargo bay is 6m longer than the ST, 1m wider and 0.5m higher - the BelugaXL has the largest cargo bay cross-section of all existing cargo aircraft worldwide. Part of the length increase has been achieved by maintaining the full-width further aft than before. This allows the outsized aircraft to carry a pair of A350 wings. It operates at Mach 0.69 up to 35,000 ft (11,000 m) over 2,300 nmi (4,300 km; 2,600 mi) instead of the original 900 nmi (1,700 km; 1,000 mi). And as for the livery with the smile and the eyes, that was the result of an internal vote with twenty-thousand Airbus employees chose the final cheeky design

Six will be used for operations from 2023, with the delivery of the last fifth aircraft considering with the end of the original A300-600 Beluga retirement.

Check out my favorite ice cream here:    • Creating A Passenger Monster From The...  

Why This Plane Exists & Why Its The Biggest Cargo Plane Of The Future In The Sky