The Hindu Business Line : A miracle called Airbus 380

AIRBUS Industrie's "flagship of the 21st century" — A380 - the world's largest commercial aircraft that was unveiled in Toulouse, France, in January lends a new dimension to global mobility and distance. Boeing's Jumbo 747, which ushered in a new era in commercial aviation 35 years ago and dominated the global skies is now challenged by the biggest flying machine ever built. A380 has a flying range of 15,000 km and can have up to 555 seats in three classes. It can carry up to 800 passengers.

Its freight version, A380-F, is designed to carry a payload of 150 tonnes. Built with avant garde technologies and processes in fabrication with new high load, light composite materials, automated fastening systems and joining techniques, A380 has also involved new logistics marvels and ingenuities.

Global air passenger traffic is forecast to register an average annual increase of 5.3 per cent over the 20-year period between 2004 and 2023.

Airfreight too (freight tonne kilometres) is projected to grow at an annual average rate of 5.9 per cent over the same 20-year period. The world's freighter fleet is expected to more than double.

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), "China and India have the potential to reshape the travel industry." Airlines in Asia are expected to experience the fastest growth rates. A380 has been hailed as the Airbus Industrie's "response to the emerging challenges of aviation businesses".

Airbus Industrie, a four-nation European consortium, is owned by the European Aeronautic Defence and Space company (EADS) — 80 per cent, and the UK's BAe Systems — 20 per cent. EADS was formed following a merger of Aerospatiale-Matra of France, DiamlerChrysler Aerospace of Germany, and CASA of Spain.

About 25 per cent of the new A380 aircraft is built with composite materials to keep weight low: 22 per cent CFRP (Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastic) for the central box of the wings, the horizontal stabilisers, the fin, the rear fuselage section and for ceiling beams; another 3 per cent material is Glare, fibre-metal laminate, a new material that is highly resistant to fatigue and is used in the construction of panels for the upper fuselage.

Transcending the old national work-sharing traditions, components for the A380 airframe are manufactured by industrial partners in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, China, South Korea, Malaysia and the US, apart from prime contractors in France, Germany, the UK and Spain. More than 200 major contracts are in place with about 120 suppliers and industrial partners on the A380. The aircraft will be powered with 70,000 lb Rolls-Royce Trent 900 thrust engines and some of them with the General Electric' Pratt and Whitney Engine Alliance GP 7200.

Each site produces a section of the aircraft, which is then transported to the Airbus' final assembly line in Toulouse or Hamburg. At 36 metre long and 12 metre wide, the A380 wing made in England is the largest so far designed and built for a commercial aircraft.

The cockpit is built at St Nazaire in France. Wings for the A380 are designed and built at Airbus' two sites in the UK — Filton near Bristol and Broughton in North Wales. Known as the West Factory, the 83,500 square metre facility in Broughton is believed to be the largest factory built in the UK in recent years. Reassembled with the other wing components, a complete 45-metre wing, comprising some 32,000 parts, is transported to the final assembly line in Toulouse.

About 4,500 of the components for A380 are fabricated at Varel, Germany, most of them for fuselage shell, the construction of which is done at Nordenham.

The floor panels for the upper, main and lower decks of the forward fuselage section are manufactured in Elbe, Dresden. The Airbus plant in Bremen assembles the A380 landing flaps — devices which generate and control the lift of the wings. At Hamburg, the rear part of the forward fuselage and the aft fuselage are assembled with components received from Nordenham. Stade, also in Germany, assembles the vertical tailplane and is flown directly to Toulouse.

Airbus has devised and requisitioned land and sea transport network, using specially designed barges, road trailers, and ferry.

Opting for a multimodal scheme, comprising maritime transport, river barges, harbour cargo loaders and outsized road convoys, besides the five-strong Beluga fleet (operated by ATI, an Airbus subsidiary) that was requisitioned to move smaller sections, a joint venture with leading French ship-owner and dry bulk specialist Louis Dreyfus Amateurs and Norway's Leif Hoegh & Co. have been awarded the A380 maritime transport contract.

The joint venture ordered a ro-ro ship from China's Jinlan shipyard, near Shanghai, at a reported cost of $22.25 million.

The eight-metre wide and over 10-metre high fuselage sections are shipped from Hamburg, loaded on to the Ville de Bordeaux, a purpose-built 154-metre roll on- roll off (ro-ro) ferry, to Mostyn harbour in Wales, that is then carried on a barge which travels 35 km along the river Dee twice, carrying one at a time. Bordeaux-based ship owner and tanker operator Socatra operates the barges.

They use a variable ballast system and GPS navigation that enables them to pass under bridges even during floods. The trickiest point of the 12-hour journey is passing through the arches of Bordeaux's famous 19th century Pont de Pierre bridge.

It takes four journeys over one week to move all six major sections for one A380 up the river. The ship then heads to St Nazaire, Western France, where the centre part of the belly fairing, manufactured in Puerto Real, near Cadiz in Spain, is incorporated in the centre fuselage.

The two parts of the nose section of the fuselage, which contains the cockpit, are sub-assembled at Meaulte, another site in France and transported by road to St Nazaire. Both fuselage sections are then loaded on to the ferry to be taken to Pauillac, until now a little-used port at the estuary of the river Gironde located to the North of Bordeaux, where the horizontal tail plane, manufactured at Getafe is received from Spain.

At Pauillac, the parts supported on giant jigs are unloaded onto a pontoon, using a multipurpose vehicle. The vessel then sets off to Cadiz, where it picks up the horizontal tail plane and returns to Pauillac. Here, the parts are transferred from the pontoon to a special 78 by 13.8 metre barge for a 95 km journey up the river Garonne to Langon.

At Langon, the last leg of the 240 km journey begins, along road, specially widened, to the final assembly building at Blagnac airport, northeast of Toulouse.

The six sections of a complete A380 on six tractor-trailers in a convoy are carried at night at low speed to avoid traffic disturbances. The itinerary includes updating 165 km of existing roads, building 10 km of new highway, and five diversions to avoid built up areas.

The trailers with cargoes up to 8 metres wide and 50 metres long have drivers guided by a cabin computer which uses advanced Global Positioning Satellite technology to pinpoint within one centimetre where the trailer is placed on the road.

The A380 assembly line stands on the edge of Blagnac airport in Toulouse. The 490 metre long, 250 metre wide, and 46 metre high main hall is one of the largest buildings in the world — with eight big sliding doors, 90 metre wide and 27 metre high.

The assembly line is designed to produce four complete aircraft a month but has the capacity to double the production.

Here, the three sections of fuselage are joined together, the wings also joined to the fuselage. The horizontal tail plane is equipped and installed here, as are the landing gears, and the belly fairings. The fin and the rear cone are simultaneously installed.

Sections for A380 airframes are ferried by boat from Hamburg to the test centre in Dresden. One unit of the first A380 dismantled into sections was recently transported in five trips from the Hamburg Airbus plant to Dresden. Transport along the 570 km stretch involves negotiation of 42 bridges stretched over 14 days. In Dresden, the individual components that require to be discharged by heavy-duty cranes are transferred to specially equipped low loaders to be carried to the testing site.

A centre to test large-scale aircraft for fatigue has been constructed here for A380. After the initial series of tests, A380 flies to Hamburg for painting and customisation, prior to the delivery to customer.

(The author is former managing director, Container Corporation of India Ltd.)

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