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ePaper created 2012-06-20, 16:32:01 | version 1.23.6
Due to their size, Airbus uses multimodal transport for the individual components of the A380, which originate all over Europe. They transport them by sea, by river, and finally, on their own road.
12 Issue One 2010 The components for the A380 can only be transported by special low-loader trucks. The Airbus A380, the largest airplane in the world, is assembled in Toulouse in the South of France. But its component parts are made in Airbus factories all over Europe. The front and rear fuselage sec- tions come from Hamburg, Germany; the middle fuselage and the cockpit from Saint Nazaire, France; the wings from Broughton in the UK and the horizontal and vertical tail from Puerto Real, Spain. Bringing them all together in Toulouse was a special logistics challenge. This kind of European division of labour is nothing new: in former Airbus series, the compo- nents were transported by special freight airplanes also made by Airbus, called the “Beluga” after the white whale, because of its shape. But the A380 measures 73 metres in length and 24 metres in height, with a wing span of 80 metres, so that the compo- nents no longer fit in any freight airplane. The parts being transported can be up to 53 metres long, 8 metres wide and 14 me- tres high. After checking all possibilities, including the idea of an airship, in the end the logistics experts at Airbus opted for combined transport by ocean-going ship and river barge together with road trans- port. Now the components are brought from Hamburg, Broughton, Saint Nazaire and Puerto Real with a specially designed and built Ro-Ro ocean-going ship to the French port of Pouillac west of Bordeaux in the Gironde estuary. Here they are trans- ferred to a specially built Ro-Ro river barge which travels up the Gironde to the small town of Langon, about 50 km upriver from Bordeaux. This is the point where the Gironde is no longer navigable for heavy loads so that the Special The transport airplane was too small for the A380‘s components Reportage