In today’s blog to celebrate UKTI’s national ‘Export Week’ here in the UK – we take a look at just how the UK exports hundreds of aircraft wings every year across Europe.
In Broughton, amongst the rolling hills of North Wales, Airbus UK is responsible for Wing assembly for the entire family of Airbus commercial aircraft – the A320, A330, A350XWB and A380. It also uses 2 unique ways to export these wings across to Airbus’ sites at Hamburg, Bremen and Toulouse – by air and by sea.
The A320, A330 and A350 wings are exported via Airbus’ fleet of 5 A300-600ST aircraft – known as ‘Belugas’ – due to unique shape of the aircraft. The A320 wing is equipped at Broughton – with electrical, hydraulic and fuel systems installed and tested – and then flown by Beluga to the Final Assembly Line at Hamburg. If required, the Beluga can take up to 4 A320 wings at any one time. The A330 and A350 wings are partially equipped in the UK, and then transported to Bremen for electrics and hydraulics installation, as well as flight control systems installation. They are then flown to Toulouse for to the A330 final assembly line via Beluga.
The Beluga is a unique sight in skies above the UK. It can carry a Maximum payload of around 47 tonnes (the equivalent to the weight of nearly 4 London Buses). Below is both a picture of how the Beluga ‘eats’ its aircraft wings (which is set to change following the development of a new loading station to protect the wings from strong winds), as well as a video explaining the capability and process of exporting the wings.
The wings for the A380 however, are far too large for the Beluga – and so Airbus transports them to the final assembly line in Toulouse by sea.
Firstly, the wings are shrink wrapped in a protective covering, then transported 1 mile by road on a special 96 wheel remote controlled transporter to the River Dee. They are then loaded, 1 wing at a time, onto a special river barge which travels to Mostyn, North Wales, where they are then put onto a specially designed transport ferry.
Finally, when the wing arrives in Bordeaux, it is loaded onto an Airbus lorry and driven the next 125 miles by road to the A380 Final assembly line in Toulouse.
To see how this is achieved, a recent BBC documentary video (see below) charts the journey from Wales to Toulouse (from around 50 minutes onwards…)
https://youtu.be/PF6ZuBDlNjY?t=50m
