The European aircraft manufacturer Airbus has announced its entry into the oversized cargo transportation market. Now one of the two leaders in this segment is Antonov Airlines, which use An-124 Ruslan and An-225 Mriya aircraft.

To work in the new market, Airbus created a separate airline and began transferring Beluga aircraft of the previous generation, BelugaST, to it. ST stands for Super Transporter in the model name.

The Europeans created these airliners on the basis of the A300-600 aircraft in the early 1990s. For this, a large-volume fuselage was built up from above, and the cockpit was shifted down. The aircraft got its name for its resemblance to beluga whales.

The planes were needed by Airbus, since its factories are concentrated in four European countries at once – Germany, France, Great Britain and Spain. Belugas delivered the assembled parts of the airliners to the final assembly lines.

BelugaST: key features

Airbus produced five BelugaSTs in total. According to the announced plans, the new subsidiary airline will receive two of these super transporters in 2022. In 2023, the fleet will increase to three BelugaSTs, and in 2024 to five BelugaSTs.

According to Airbus, these airliners will be able to fly for another 20 years. The company decided to use them in commercial transportation, as it has already released an updated BelugaXL for its business of delivering aircraft parts to factories.

“The BelugaST’s cargo bay has the world’s largest internal section of any transport airliner and can accommodate oversized cargo up to 7.1 meters wide and 6.7 meters high,” Airbus said.

For comparison, in the An-124 the width of the cargo compartment is 6.4 meters and the height is 4.4 meters. However, the aircraft has an advantage in terms of the maximum weight of cargo that it can carry in one flight. For the An-124, this figure ranges from 120 to 150 tons, depending on the modification, for the BelugaST – 40 tons.

Source: Avianews