{"id":27394345,"date":"2026-10-09T10:47:47","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T08:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/airbus-beluga-belugaxl-why-airbus-flies-its-wings-in-a-whale\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T10:47:55","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T08:47:55","slug":"airbus-beluga-belugaxl-why-airbus-flies-its-wings-in-a-whale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/de\/airbus-beluga-belugaxl-why-airbus-flies-its-wings-in-a-whale\/","title":{"rendered":"Airbus Beluga and BelugaXL: Why Airbus Flies Its Wings in a Whale"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\n<!-- mfsh:top -->\n\n<style>\n.mfsh-trigger{display:inline-flex;align-items:center;gap:10px;height:44px;padding:0 18px;margin:0 0 26px;border:2px solid 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It had flown in from Bordeaux. Over the previous quarter of a century, according to Airbus, that one aircraft had carried around 1,700 wings and made some 13,300 journeys between the company\u2019s factories.<\/p>\n<p>Its registration was F-GSTF, the fifth and last BelugaST to be built. Airbus is turning it into a classroom. Its job, flying giant pieces of unfinished aircraft around Europe, has passed to a bigger, grinning successor, the BelugaXL.<\/p>\n<p>The Airbus Beluga is one of the oddest-looking aircraft in regular service anywhere, and it exists for a reason that has little to do with aviation and everything to do with European politics. Airbus does not build its aircraft in one place. So for more than fifty years it has had to fly them to themselves.<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"background:#f4f6f8;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:18px 22px;margin:26px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;font-size:17px;color:#0d1117\">Quick Facts<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0\"><strong>BelugaST:<\/strong> Airbus A300-600ST Super Transporter, based on the A300-600; five built, first flight 13 September 1994, in service from January 1996<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0\"><strong>BelugaXL:<\/strong> Airbus A330-743L, based on the A330-200; six built, first flight 19 July 2018, first operational flight 9 January 2020<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0\"><strong>Predecessor:<\/strong> Aero Spacelines Super Guppy, flown by Airbus from the early 1970s until October 1997<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0\"><strong>Engines:<\/strong> BelugaST: two General Electric CF6; BelugaXL: two Rolls-Royce Trent 700<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0\"><strong>Capacity:<\/strong> BelugaST up to 47 tonnes; the BelugaXL has about 30 per cent more capacity and carries two A350 wings where the ST carried one<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0\"><strong>Network:<\/strong> Eleven Airbus sites around Europe, including Toulouse, Hamburg, Broughton and Bremen<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0\"><strong>Charter side-line:<\/strong> Airbus Beluga Transport, the BelugaST airline, gained its French AOC in November 2023 and was closed in January 2025<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0\"><strong>Retirement:<\/strong> BelugaST 5 (F-GSTF) made its final flight on 29 January 2026; from mid-2027 the BelugaXL is to be Airbus\u2019s only component transporter<\/p><\/div>\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">An aircraft built in four countries<\/h2>\n<p>Airbus grew out of a consortium of French, German, Spanish and British aerospace companies, and each partner wanted a meaningful share of the work. The answer was to divide the aircraft by section. The arrangement has survived every merger since: broadly, wings come from the UK, fuselage sections from Germany, tail parts from Spain, and the nose and centre section from France, with final assembly in Toulouse or Hamburg.<\/p>\n<p>That is a fine way to share out jobs and a terrible way to move freight. A wing for a widebody is too long for most roads, a fuselage barrel too wide for rail tunnels, and the main assembly line in Toulouse sits far from the sea. Early on, Airbus moved parts by road. As production grew, it took to the air.<\/p>\n<p>The aircraft it chose were second-hand oddities from America. From the early 1970s, Airbus flew its sections in Super Guppies, the bulbous outsize freighters that Aero Spacelines had built on the bones of Boeing Stratocruiser-family airframes to carry rocket stages for NASA.<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/10\/super-guppy-f-btgv-airbus-industrie-1972.jpg\" alt=\"Aero Spacelines Super Guppy F-BTGV in Airbus Industrie and Aeromaritime colours on the apron at Manchester in March 1972\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Where the whale came from: Super Guppy F-BTGV in Airbus Industrie and A\u00e9romaritime colours at Manchester, March 1972. The four-engined turboprop carried the consortium\u2019s sections for a quarter of a century. Photo: Ken Fielding \/ CC BY-SA 3.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n<p>The Guppy years produced the best joke in the business: every Airbus, the saying went, was delivered on the wings of a Boeing. The Guppies were also ageing, increasingly costly to keep flying and too small for the wings Airbus was planning next. (Their remarkable American back story, Apollo hardware and all, is told in our feature on <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/aero-spacelines-guppy-flying-whales-built-apollo\/\">the flying whales that built Apollo<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Building a whale from an A300<\/h2>\n<p>In 1991 A\u00e9rospatiale and DASA, two of the Airbus partners, set up a joint company, Super Airbus Transport International, to build a replacement. Rather than buy a giant off the shelf, they took the airliner they knew best, the A300-600, and rebuilt it.<\/p>\n<p>The wings, engines, landing gear and lower fuselage stayed standard A300. Everything above the floor was cut away and replaced by an enormous bulging upper fuselage, the hump that gives the type its nickname. At the front sits a hinged cargo door, the whole upper nose swinging up out of the way. To make that possible, the cockpit was moved down below the level of the cargo floor, which is why a Beluga appears to be looking at you from under a raised eyebrow.<\/p>\n<p>Dropping the flight deck had a practical payoff. On the Super Guppy, the flight controls, wiring and hydraulics running through the hinged nose had to be disconnected and reconnected every time it was swung open. On the Beluga, the cockpit never moves, so loading is far quicker.<\/p>\n<p>The first aircraft flew on 13 September 1994. The type entered service in January 1996, and by late 1997 the Super Guppies were gone. Five Belugas were built in all, registered F-GSTA to F-GSTF; the last, BelugaST 5, entered service in December 2000.<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/d0WS2L8YzuA\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n\n<p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin:-10px 0 24px;font-style:italic\">The Points Guy\u2019s tour of a BelugaXL, inside and out: a rare look at the aircraft that now carries Airbus\u2019s wings around Europe.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Built for volume, not weight<\/h2>\n<p>The first thing anyone notices about the Airbus Beluga is its size. The second, if they know freighters, is how little it can lift. The BelugaST\u2019s maximum payload is about 47 tonnes, a fraction of what a military heavy-lifter such as the <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/antonov-an-124\/\">Antonov An-124<\/a> or the <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/c-5-galaxy\/\">Lockheed C-5 Galaxy<\/a> will carry.<\/p>\n<p>That is the point. An aircraft wing is mostly air. What it needs is length and cross-section, not tonnage, and a Beluga hold is shaped around exactly that: a tall, round tube with a flat floor and a door the full width of the hold. The type was designed around the largest components Airbus was planning to build when it was launched, notably the wings of the bigger A340 variants.<\/p>\n<p>The same shape turned out to be useful for things that had nothing to do with Airbus. In 1997 a BelugaST flew a record-setting load: a chemical tank for a merchant ship. In 1999 one flew Eug\u00e8ne Delacroix\u2019s painting <em>Liberty Leading the People<\/em>, upright in a protective container, from Paris to Tokyo. In 2006 another delivered Europe\u2019s Columbus laboratory module for the International Space Station to NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center.<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/10\/airbus-beluga-columbus-module-unloading-ksc-2006.jpg\" alt=\"An Airbus Beluga with its nose door raised at the Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility as the ESA Columbus module is unloaded onto a platform\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Kennedy Space Center, 31 May 2006: BelugaST No. 3 with its upper nose raised as the European Space Agency\u2019s Columbus laboratory slides out onto a loading platform. Note the A300 cockpit tucked below the cargo floor. Photo: Jim Grossmann \/ NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The airline nobody needed<\/h2>\n<p>When its successor arrived, Airbus tried to give the old whales a second career. In January 2022 it announced it would offer the BelugaST fleet to outside customers for outsize cargo. Within weeks the market looked even more promising: Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine took the Russian-operated An-124s out of the Western charter market, and the only An-225 was destroyed.<\/p>\n<p>Airbus Beluga Transport got its own French air operator\u2019s certificate in November 2023. It lasted about fourteen months. In January 2025 Airbus told FlightGlobal it had decided to terminate the business, and suspended all BelugaST flights. Industry coverage since has pointed to limited demand: the Beluga\u2019s modest payload, its operating costs and its awkward loading made it a hard sell against freighters such as the An-124.<\/p>\n<p>Late in 2025 Airbus said it was looking for permanent homes for the five aircraft in museums, exhibition spaces and education rather than sending them for scrap. F-GSTF was the first to go, flying into Broughton on 29 January 2026 to become a science, technology, engineering and maths centre for schools.<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7\"><em>&ldquo;It\u2019s a proud and incredibly exciting moment for Broughton.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Gareth Davies<\/strong> &mdash; Head of Airbus Broughton, Airbus press release, 29 January 2026<\/div><\/div>\n\n<p>The aircraft flew its last mission with Airbus pilot Didier Puxeddu at the controls. For crews, the Beluga was never just a freighter.<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7\"><em>&ldquo;Flying the Beluga has always been a unique privilege.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Didier Puxeddu<\/strong> &mdash; BelugaST pilot who flew F-GSTF\u2019s final mission, Airbus press release, 29 January 2026<\/div><\/div>\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">BelugaXL: same trick, bigger whale<\/h2>\n<p>By the mid-2010s the original fleet had a problem it could not fix: production rates. The BelugaST could carry only one A350 wing per trip, and Airbus was planning to build far more A350s and single-aisle jets. In November 2014 Airbus launched a replacement, and once again it chose to convert one of its own aircraft rather than buy someone else\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>The BelugaXL, officially the A330-743L, is built on an A330 airframe, keeping its wings, engines and lower fuselage, with a new bulging upper fuselage, a lowered cockpit and an upward-opening nose door in the same pattern as before. Its two Rolls-Royce Trent 700s replace the BelugaST\u2019s General Electric CF6s. The upper fuselage is longer and wider than the old one, and the result is around 30 per cent more capacity. The headline number for Airbus is simpler: a BelugaST could carry one A350 wing, a BelugaXL carries two.<\/p>\n<p>There was a neat bit of symmetry in how the new whale came together. When the first section of the first BelugaXL arrived at Toulouse in November 2016, it came by BelugaST.<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"max-width:550px;margin:0 auto 28px\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/embed\/Tweet.html?id=794088625893965824&theme=light\" style=\"width:100%;height:400px;border:none;overflow:hidden\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n\n<p>The first BelugaXL flew from Toulouse on 19 July 2018. EASA type certification followed in November 2019, and on 9 January 2020 the type flew its first operational mission. Airbus eventually built six.<\/p>\n<p>They are impossible to mistake. Airbus painted them with a pair of eyes and a broad grin across the nose, which on the ground makes the XL look like a cartoon and on short final looks faintly alarming.<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/10\/airbus-belugaxl-f-gxlj-toulouse-2026.jpg\" alt=\"A BelugaXL, registration F-GXLJ, on approach to Toulouse-Blagnac with gear down, showing the painted eyes and smile on its nose\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">BelugaXL No. 4, F-GXLJ, on approach to Toulouse-Blagnac in March 2026. The painted eyes and smile sit above the lowered A330 cockpit. Photo: Cl\u00e9ment Gruin \/ CC BY-SA 4.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n<div style=\"max-width:550px;margin:0 auto 28px\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/embed\/Tweet.html?id=1108010263633117184&theme=light\" style=\"width:100%;height:400px;border:none;overflow:hidden\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Why not just use a ship?<\/h2>\n<p>Airbus does move a great deal by sea and road. Most of the A380\u2019s enormous fuselage sections never fitted a Beluga and travelled by ship and road instead. But for the steady daily flow of wings, fuselage barrels and tail sections between Broughton, Bremen, Hamburg, Toulouse and the other sites, speed and predictability matter more than tonnage.<\/p>\n<p>A flight takes hours where a sea and road journey takes days. Factories building at rates of dozens of aircraft a month cannot keep a fortnight of parts sitting in ships at sea, and a schedule that depends on tides and road permits is a schedule waiting to slip. The Airbus Beluga turns a scattered European industrial map into something that behaves like a single, very long factory floor.<\/p>\n<p>That is also why the company keeps building its own. Off-the-shelf freighters are optimised for weight; Airbus needs volume. Its own airliners already have the wings, engines, certification basis and maintenance support it needs. All it has to add is the whale.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The last of the STs<\/h2>\n<p>Airbus says that from mid-2027 the BelugaXL will be the only aircraft moving its components between its eleven European sites. The remaining BelugaSTs are on their way to new homes, and F-GSTF is already parked for good at Broughton, where its first visitors will be schoolchildren rather than wing spars.<\/p>\n<p>Thirty years ago Airbus solved a political problem with an aeroplane, and the solution worked so well that it has never stopped flying. Somewhere over the Bay of Biscay right now, there is probably a whale with a smile on its face carrying the wings of an aircraft that does not exist yet.<\/p>\n<p><em>Sources: Airbus press release, An iconic Airbus BelugaST readies for new mission in the UK, 29 January 2026; Wikipedia, Airbus Beluga and Airbus BelugaXL; Flightradar24 blog, The Airbus Beluga ST: A Whale of a Story, 29 January 2026; FlightGlobal, Airbus begins BelugaXL operations, 13 January 2020, and Airbus to close A300-600ST Beluga airline just 14 months after gaining AOC, 24 January 2025; Aerospace Global News, 27 January 2026; Airways Magazine, 2 February 2026; Aviation A2Z, 29 January 2026; NASA Kennedy Space Center image archive (KSC-06pd0950, KSC-06pd0954); Airbus on X.<\/em><\/p>\n<!-- mfsh:bottom -->\n\n<button type=\"button\" class=\"mfsh-trigger mfsh-bottom\" data-mfsh-placement=\"bottom\" aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"><svg><use href=\"#mfsh-i-share\"\/><\/svg>Share this story<\/button>\n\n<!-- \/mfsh:bottom -->\n\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\n\n\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>What is the Airbus Beluga?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The Airbus Beluga is an outsize cargo aircraft that Airbus uses to fly large aircraft parts, such as wings and fuselage sections, between its factories in Europe. The original BelugaST, the A300-600ST, first flew in 1994 and five were built. It was named after the beluga whale, which its bulging upper fuselage resembles.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why does Airbus need its own Beluga aircraft?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Airbus builds major sections in different countries, with wings largely from the UK, fuselage sections from Germany, tail parts from Spain and final assembly in Toulouse or Hamburg. Wings and fuselage barrels are too large for normal roads and railways, so Airbus flies them between its eleven European sites in its own Belugas.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What aircraft did the Airbus Beluga replace?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The BelugaST replaced Airbus\u2019s Aero Spacelines Super Guppy fleet, outsize turboprop freighters converted from Boeing Stratocruiser-family airframes. Airbus flew Super Guppies from the early 1970s, giving rise to the joke that every Airbus was delivered on the wings of a Boeing. The last Super Guppy left Airbus service in October 1997.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What is the difference between the BelugaST and the BelugaXL?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The BelugaST is based on the A300-600 and uses General Electric CF6 engines. The BelugaXL, officially the A330-743L, is based on the A330-200 with Rolls-Royce Trent 700 engines. The XL has a longer, wider upper fuselage and about 30 per cent more capacity, carrying two A350 wings where the BelugaST carried one.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How many BelugaXL aircraft does Airbus have?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Airbus built six BelugaXL aircraft. The first flew from Toulouse on 19 July 2018, the type received EASA certification in November 2019, and it flew its first operational mission on 9 January 2020. Airbus says the BelugaXL will be its only component transporter from mid-2027 as the BelugaST fleet retires.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why did the cockpit move below the cargo floor on the Beluga?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The Beluga loads through an upward-hinging nose door. Placing the cockpit below the cargo floor means the flight deck, its controls and wiring never move when the nose opens. On the older Super Guppy, the controls and systems running through the hinged nose had to be disconnected for loading, which made every turnaround slower.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What happened to Airbus Beluga Transport?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Airbus Beluga Transport was the airline Airbus created to charter its BelugaST fleet to outside customers. It received a French air operator\u2019s certificate in November 2023 and was closed in January 2025, about fourteen months later, when Airbus decided to terminate the business. Airbus is now finding permanent homes for the retired BelugaSTs.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\n\n\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What is the Airbus Beluga?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The Airbus Beluga is an outsize cargo aircraft that Airbus uses to fly large aircraft parts, such as wings and fuselage sections, between its factories in Europe. The original BelugaST, the A300-600ST, first flew in 1994 and five were built. It was named after the beluga whale, which its bulging upper fuselage resembles.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Why does Airbus need its own Beluga aircraft?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Airbus builds major sections in different countries, with wings largely from the UK, fuselage sections from Germany, tail parts from Spain and final assembly in Toulouse or Hamburg. 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Airbus is now finding permanent homes for the retired BelugaSTs.\"}}]}<\/script><div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/aero-spacelines-guppy-flying-whales-built-apollo\/\">The Flying Whales That Built Apollo<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/airbus-broughton-a380-hall-a321-wing-factory-2026\/\">Airbus Broughton: The A380 Wing Hall Becomes an A321 Factory<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/why-nothing-can-replace-the-antonov-an-124-ruslan\/\">Why Nothing Can Replace the Antonov An-124<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/an-225-mriya-largest-aircraft-ever-built\/\">The An-225 Mriya: The Largest Aircraft Ever Built<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Airbus builds its wings in Wales, its fuselages in Germany and its tails in Spain. For fifty years the answer to getting them together has been a whale-shaped aircraft of its own making.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":27394336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[665],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27394345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aviation-world"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Airbus Beluga and BelugaXL: Wings in a Whale | MiGFlug<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Airbus builds wings in Wales and fuselages in Germany, so it built its own whale to carry them. 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