Journey of transportation of Airbus A380 parts

, the world's largest passenger aircraft, including 4 million parts shipped from 30 countries via land, water, and air.

It was 1am in the peaceful town of Lévignac near the city of Toulouse in southwestern France. People lined up along the main street of the town to wait for a parade. However, there was no drum horn or any means to decorate the event.

Instead, a convoy of six large trailers pulled different parts of the world's largest commercial aircraft, the Airbus A380 . The crowd cheered as the plane's wings, fuselage and horizontal wings slowly moved through the town, the event taking place every few weeks, according to CNN.

Giant assembly line

The final assembly line (FAL) for the two-story A380 can carry over 500 passengers located at the Jean-Luc Lagardere factory in Toulouse-Blagnac airport. It is also the headquarters and flight test area of ​​the Airbus Group, which produces many other products such as the A320 model with a one-way cabin and A330 and A350 wide-body aircraft.

Since the delivery of the first aircraft to Singapore Airlines in 2007, the assembly line in Toulouse has assembled over 200 A380s. Of these, more than 100 aircraft belong to the Emirates airline fleet in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Like other Airbus projects, most of the A380 parts are manufactured at its facilities throughout Europe, and components come from suppliers around the world. The wings of a huge aircraft were built in Broughton, Wales, the body was from Hamburg, Germany and Saint-Nazaire, France, the horizontal wing was produced in Cadiz, Spain; standing tail was born in Hamburg.

Transporting the bulky parts of the aircraft to Toulouse is a tightly coordinated process under the supervision of Arnaud Cazeneuve, Airbus director of large cargo."For me, an A380 consists of six main parts: three parts of the fuselage, two wings and a tail wing , " said Mr. Cazeneuve.

From rivets and bolts, to seats and engines, an A380 is made up of about 4 million individual parts manufactured by 1,500 companies from 30 countries around the world, according to statistics. Therefore, the mode of transportation of these parts is also very diverse, including waterways, airways and roads.

Waterway

Airbus has a fleet of three vessels specifically designed to transport the main A380 components to a floating buoy in Pauillac, right on the French Atlantic coast. The ships are responsible for carrying the six completed A380 parts manufactured by Airbus facilities in Wales, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

Barge transports aircraft parts on river.(Photo: CNN).

Share with CNN, Mr. Cazeneuve said the factory does not use cranes. Each factory places parts of the A380 on a shipping rack and a multipurpose vehicle follows the mold to transport them."I do not have to directly operate this stage, but simply transfer parts from one vehicle to another," Mr. Cazeneuve said.

Road no

While the six main A380 parts are transported by sea, the vertical wing of the aircraft is carried by air from Hamburg to Toulouse. The aircraft's first flight was not outside the aircraft, but inside the Airbus A300-600ST super transport , also known as Beluga.

Super Beluga muscle transport.(Photo: CNN).

Beluga air transport was born in the form of wide-body passenger aircraft. Each aircraft's cockpit was lowered so that the head formed a large storage compartment. Cargo is loaded on the plane from the beginning. The Beluga transport team of five aircraft has become a bridge between Airbus' manufacturers in Europe, whose main mission is to transport parts of all Airbus aircraft to FAL. Although Beluga carries oversized cargo, it can only accommodate A380 vertical fins because other parts are too large.

At Pauillac, six main A380 parts were unloaded by barges for their next trip to Toulouse. The two barges will make 4 round-trip journeys in 8 days, over the distance of 95 km from the Garonne River to Langon. From there, the department had to travel another 240 km to reach FAL in Toulouse. When every major part of the A380 arrives at Langon, it is loaded onto a special trailer pulled by a truck. After all 6 sections arrive at the meeting point, the trip to Toulouse will begin.

Road

Because it only moves at night, the train takes two nights to travel all the way 240km to Toulouse, according to the secondary route called Itinéraire à Grand Gabarit (IGG), upgraded to fit the size of the trailer."In the past, there was a route connecting Langon and Toulouse. When Airbus built the A380 project, we went to the authorities to discuss the upgrade," said Cazeneuve.

The convoy carries 6 main parts of Airbus A380.(Photo: CNN).

Airbus paid 57% of the road upgrade cost of US $ 205 million and the government paid the remaining 43% due to the economic benefits of the A380 project. The road is widened, more than 6,500 trees are planted, 3-4 times the number of trees cut to serve the project. Small detours have also been built to help convoy easily navigate through some of the 21 towns and villages on the route.

Along with a series of other changes, the roundabouts were rebuilt to allow trucks to go straight through the center of the detour. More than 35km of bike and horse paths have also been opened with wider new paths.

Last leg

"When driving on the road, you will feel as if the runway is exclusively for A380 aircraft. You know it is different from the normal road," Mr. Cazeneuve said. The schedule for the convoy's transport schedule is available on IGG's own website, and locals are also reminded three days before each convoy starts the trip through the roadside electronic display.

As the trucks move through the night, the route is blocked at the intersection to ensure the safety of the convoy and the town of Lévignac. Instead of using a detour, the convoy goes straight through the center of town. This is a segment of the IGG route, where each vehicle is escorted by a walking assistant along the trailers. Mr. Cazeneuve said that the aircraft onboard was only about 50 cm from buildings along the street and that people could see the convoy right in front of the window.

When passing through the town of Lévignac, the train takes an extra hour to reach the final stop, the FAL line in Toulouse. Despite his insomnia, Mr. Cazeneuve often left his office at midnight as soon as the convoy arrived in Toulouse because he wanted to monitor and make sure everything went according to plan.