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The Airbus Takes The 'Road-Sea-River-Road' Route
The wings of Airbus's huge new airliner are too big to be transported by air,
so the company has developed a very complex, 'road-sea-river-road', route from
Iowa to Toulouse, via North Wales. Trelleborg has supplied a series of products
to guarantee that this journey is trauma-proof.
The challenge of getting the various parts of the A380 to Toulouse, where
the aircraft is assembled, has led Airbus to develop its own logistics. Until
now,
it has mainly used the voluminous A300-600T aircraft, known as the Beluga because
of its whale-like appearance, to transport components by air. However, the
Beluga is not spacious enough for the largest parts of the A380, and Airbus
has developed
its own 'road-sea-river-road' transport link.
The largest elements of the A380 are its wings. The skins are made at the
Alcoa plant in Davenport, Iowa - the only plant in the world able to produce
35-meter
aluminum plates. The plates are transported on a special telescopic truck to
Baltimore where they board a ship for the BAE Systems factory in Broughton,
Wales, where the wings are assembled. Each completed wing, now 45 meters long,
is mounted
on a special jig on which it will remain until it reaches Toulouse. For the
first stage of the journey, it is carried on a 96-wheel trailer to a terminal
on the
River Dee.
There, the wing is loaded onto a powered barge. Although the barge was specially
designed for the route, it must wait for low tide to be able to pass under
the bridges along the way. At the port of Mostyn, 24 kilometers downriver,
the wing
is loaded aboard Airbus's own Shanghai-built RoRo ferry, the "Ville de Bordeaux," which
takes it to Pauillac, near Bordeaux. There, it is transferred via a Polish
built pontoon onto another barge.
This makes its way a hundred kilometers up the River Garonne to Langon. There
it waits for a second wing and a fuselage to arrive, and then a long, slow
nighttime convoy travels 240 kilometers along country roads, resting during
the day to
avoid the traffic. Airbus has had to strengthen the roads and build bypasses
to avoid villages along the route. Three days later, the convoy finally reaches
the Toulouse plant.
Fenders cushion the journey of fledgling giant. Trelleborg provided fenders,
under the brands Fentek and Seaward, for many of the transfer points along
the route
taken by the wings. The company also supplied modified donuts and pads
for the special berth trestles at Broughton and Mostyn.
In Mostyn, Airbus's RoRo ferry berths against Trelleborg parallel motion
fenders, which provide a high level of energy absorption and allow a
much lighter support
structure. To ensure the barge does not strike land too forcefully when
reaching Langon, three-part trapezoidal fenders and a donut are used
to berth the
barge at the quay. It then slides along polyethylene fenders into a v-shaped
wet-dock
where vertical arch fenders buffer its arrival.
Singapore welcomed the giant A380 for the second time when the aircraft
arrived for its appearance in the Asian Aerospace air show, which ran
from Feb. 21-26
at the Changi Exhibition Centre.
The flight test aircraft departed from Toulouse, France, having made
a stopover at Airbus headquarters facility following its return from
cold
weather evaluations
in Iqaluit, Canada.
Singapore Airlines will be the first carrier to introduce the A380
in revenue service, with commercial operations to begin at the
end of the
year. In
addition to starring at Asian Aerospace, the A380 will perform
compatibility tests
at Changi Airport in preparation for the upcoming inauguration
of scheduled flights.
Singapore welcomed the A380 for the first time last November, when
the first flight test aircraft landed at Changi Airport to kick
off a highly
successful
Asia-Pacific demonstration tour.
The double-decker aircraft can accommodate up to 840 passengers.
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