Airbus unveils Beluga XL transport aircraft with whale theme (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Airbus unveils Beluga XL transport aircraft with whale theme (2018)

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41 pointsTomte34 comments

The Airbus HQ is in Toulouse, France. The runway of TLS runs roughly perpendicular to the ring road, and it's common to see the Belugas at very low altitudes crossing above.

The first time I saw one cross, I nearly drove off the road - the scale and form of these things is quite spectacular.

Yep, I see Belugas flying over Hamburg nearly every week, as they deliver or take away parts from the assembly in Finkenwerder. It's great to see those planes gliding across the Elbe river, always looks amazing.

I am still sad that I missed the Beluga during my internship at Munich Airport in air freight. My boss really should have called me, even at midnight. But then I heard some strange stories afterwards about that flight that might explain why it was done with a limited number of people at the dead of night. Never found out how much was rumors and how much fact so. I did have the opportunity to load a Antonov 124 so. That was fun!

What rumors? Come on!

Something with a hole in the tail of an aircraft, big enough to fly a new tail in over night. As I said, rumors. And those always flew high while I was there. Or maybe it was story told to a poor intern to not have him feel bad about having missed a Beluga. Your guess is as good as mine.

"Parts delivery from Hamburg" is a thing I hear repeatedly month-after-month from the repair, purchasing, and inventory departments. Small world.

Hamburg has one of the world's largest ports, second only to Rotterdam in Europe. Maybe there's a connection here?

airplane parts

Hrr Hrr. I have a theory regarding a mysterious anomaly,

wherein mostly older people crash their cars into the windows of shops in a small shopping street.

Like nowhere else.

Thing is, this is exactly in the glide path of them on landing approach to Hamburg-Finkenwerder,

where they are already 300 to 200meters down, maybe even just 150.

There is nothing special to the street, just some small shops, banks, one-way, speed limited, some 'Metro-Station' nearby.

OTOH, I don't really get the 'scale' thing. Compare

[1] https://www.schiffbilder.de/1200/hamburg-am-2142015-fix-was-...

[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Airbus_Beluga_%C3%BC...

[3] https://bildarchiv-hamburg.com/photo/eine-airbus-beluga-land...

with

[4] https://www.flickr.com/photos/158928162@N07/50522989532/

[5] https://www.flickr.com/photos/100322148@N02/47244267731/

all about the same place from different directions at similar altitude.

And both are nothing against an Antonov-225, also sound-wise :-)

Kind of hard to compare due to differences in the distance to the planes bring pictures.

I can understanding that, a little.

The one time I drove round a residential area of west London, near Heathrow, I was startled when I went round a corner and saw a 747 (or A380?) apparently at the end of the road at roughly eye level. (The road was on a slight incline.)

This kind of thing, but I can't find a from-a-car type view: https://www.dreamstime.com/editorial-stock-image-emirates-ai...

A bit different but I had a disconcerting experience joining a motorway from a slip road. There was a Huey-style helicopter fuselage on the back of a lorry in lane 1 and for a second I thought I was driving alongside a flying helicopter

Few weeks back I saw it landing while on the way to lunch. Looked so bizarre I thought for a second I was seeing things.

Its my favourite plane now.

Props to airbus for going with a funky design on those.

> The smiling whale design was chosen by Airbus staff following a poll in which 20,000 employees were given six options and asked to choose their favorite. With 40% of the vote, it was the clear winner.

Have we learned nothing from Boaty McBoatface? Lol!

I think it's a bit different when sending a survey out to your own employees - if the internet was asked to pick we'd end up with a flying hentai theme or something.

"6 options" vs "be creative", so yes, lesson learned

Wow, they should be able to carry hundreds of SD Cards ordered from Amazon.

On a serious note, I never understood why A380s can’t be cargo planes like the 747s.

There are several problems quite big ones in fact involved with: the A380 has four engines, weak floors, designed for passengers, no large loading door, and it’s not the most efficient aircraft.

Payload, floor structure and the ability to load long, large stuff from the nose are the main reasons. Also what I heard back the day from industry veterans. The 747 was initially conceived as a cargo plane, and thus works better at that. The A380 would be great for express / parcel carriers, but I think it's to expensive to operate on the given routes ehen compared to a 777F or similar planes (A300s were converted quite a lot, and MD11s were Lufthansa Cargos fleet until the late 2000s if memory serves well).

Seems crazy to me that a cargo conversion wasn't part of the planning from day one.

It's been a few years now but there is also another reason: not all airports could accommodate the A380, they had to build special landing zones.

Don’t underestimate the bandwidth of a Beluga filled with 1TB Micro SD-cards hurling through the skies...

To answer your question: Mostly several design issues[1]

[1] https://simpleflying.com/airbus-cargo-airbus-a380/

There was a proposal to build a freighter version of the A380, but no buyers.

Proximate reasons: the A380 is a triple-decker, with two floors designed to support the weight of seats and passengers, not cargo containers. Some reinforcement would have been needed, adding to the airframe weight. Additionally, the flight deck is on a mezzanine level in front of and between the two passenger decks -- right where the 747 freighter has a lifting nose door. So the A380 cargo mod would have required side-doors (which is okay, that's how most freight airliners work), and at least three of them -- one per deck -- which would have entailed cutting big structurally reinforced holes in the fuselage, adding more airframe weight, which was not okay.

By the time they'd done the sums, the design compromises would have made the A380 freighter less efficient than buying a pair of A330 freighters, or using the barely-smaller 747-8 (which snapped up the next-generation jumbo-sized freight market but sold very few passenger aircraft because the A380 got there first).

They have a great mascot as well https://twitter.com/wrexham/status/1096077761788166150

So what's the latest status of this?

They're in use, you can see them in St Nazaire and Toulouse in France (among others) often enough

You can also see them in Hamburg quite often. I can see them from my balcony.

And they are usually louder than an A380. I can hear them taking off from about 4km away, no matter which direction.

Just another take-off: https://fr24.com/BGA231I/2857b4b9

Did not hear that, but the loud buzzing C130-Hercules https://fr24.com/HKY688/285738c9 7km up a few minutes before.

The French wikipedia page has a list of their tail numbers: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A330-743L

and flightradar24 has a list of recent flights for 2 of them:

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/f-gxlh

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/f-gxli

A few months ago I heard a louder than usual plane fly over, I checked online, it was one of them, flying to Hamburg but taking a different route than the routes I could see on fr24.

Man that is an ugly plane. I sure hope this shape doesn't come to replace the more classic shape we currently have for passenger aircraft

Why sharing a 2018 story?

Because it's interesting as hell! I never knew about this plane and I'm delighted to see it. Thanks for sharing, OP.

They are incredible to see. Can be frightening in low altitude flight zones if you don't know about them because the perspective makes them look like they are some meters away from your building.

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