The Airbus BelugaST can now be chartered to transport massive items as big as a helicoper or a satellite.
There are very few things that enjoy universal adoration, among them cute animals. Penguins waddling, puppies playing, and beluga whales… well, just existing. We can all agree that these white, pudgy marine mammals with their oddly shaped heads are among the cutest in the animal kingdom.
So adorable are these arctic residents that an aircraft which looked like them was eventually named after them, and have continued to tickle the imagination of many a planespotter.
The Airbus Beluga has been around for almost two decades, according to the official Airbus BelugaST website. It was named the Airbus Super Transporter, but after people started calling it “beluga’” because of its all-too uncanny resemblance to the arctic marine mammal, Airbus decided to rename the aircraft BelugaST while retaining the original name in the acronym.
A few weeks ago, it was announced that the fleet has gone on to service its own standalone freight airline called Airbus Beluga Transport commercial service. Previously, their main job was to ferry aircraft parts between Airbus’ plants in Europe, but now these planes can be chartered to haul outsized machinery by air.
It can provide large cargo transport solutions for a variety of sectors, including space, energy, military, aeronautics, maritime, and humanitarian sectors. And because the Beluga ST’s cargo hold is 50 percent higher and 10 percent wider than regular cargo aircraft, say the Boeing 747-8F, it can transport massive items such as satellites, helicopters, aircraft engines, flight simulators, sailing boats, and army vehicles.
Also in the cockpit are controls for a transportable heating module that can be installed in the main deck cargo compartment, as stated in the website. This module provides temperature-controlled conditions for sensitive payloads such as satellites and even multi-million dollar paintings.
“There are very few options on the market for oversize items,” says Benoît Lemonnier, head of Airbus Beluga Transport, in an interview with CNN. “Most often there’s a need to partially dismantle a payload to make it fit in an aircraft — whereas in the Beluga, it will just fit.”
A six-fleet version called the BelugaXL is replacing the original STs. They are even longer and more spacious than their older stablemates, capable of carrying both wings—rather than just one—of the Airbus A350, the company’s latest long-haul aircraft that rivals the Boeing 787 and 777.
The massive carriers are not technically new, though, having been launched by Airbus in late 2014 as a new super transporter supporting the A350 ramp-up and other production rate increases.
“The XL is based on a much more modern platform, the A330,” Lemonnier explains. “Since 2018, six XLs have been built, and the latest one will be delivered very soon to the internal Airbus airline. The BelugaXL can fully substitute the BelugaST on the internal Airbus network, so the STs can become available for alternative service.”
Rival Boeing also has its own version of a wide-body cargo aircraft which has a similar function of transporting aircraft parts to Boeing from suppliers around the world. Called the Dreamlifter, they are as massive but not nearly as adorable as the Belugas.
If you, like me, wish to see a BelugaST or BelugaXL one day, these aircraft fly between 11 destinations around Europe, the four most common points being Toulouse Blagnac Airport, where it is regularly sighted; Hamburg Finkenwerder Airport, Chester Hawarden Airport in the UK, and the Nantes Atlantique Airport.
While the chances of flying on one of them Belugas are zip, zilch, nada, I’m holding out hope that Airbus would come up with a baby Beluga passenger plane someday.
