Beluga (A300-600ST)

Airbus · France · first flew 1994 · transport aircraft

The Airbus Beluga is an A300-600 airliner rebuilt with a vast bulbous upper fuselage to ferry outsize aircraft sections between Airbus factories.

Recognition (WEFT)

W — Wings	Low-mounted, swept
E — Engines	2 × turbofan, wing-mounted
F — Fuselage	Whale-like bulbous upper fuselage with hinged forward cargo door
T — Tail	Conventional

WEFT is AircraftIQ's four-point recognition method — how it works.

Spot it by:

Whale-like bulbous upper fuselage with hinged forward cargo door
Dropped cockpit sitting low beneath the swollen main deck
A300 wings and twin underwing turbofans below the cargo hump

Unmistakable: a smiling whale-shaped fuselage with the cockpit tucked low at the nose, riding on a standard A300 low swept wing with two underslung turbofans.

Specifications

The Beluga (A300-600ST) has a length of 56.15 m (184 ft).
It has a wingspan of 44.84 m (147 ft).
Its maximum speed is 780 km/h (485 mph).
Typical crew: 2.

Figures are for the representative variant described above; marks differ. See how AircraftIQ sources figures.

History

Five A300-600ST Super Transporters were built from 1992, the first flying on 13 September 1994. They replaced the ageing Aero Spacelines Super Guppies that had previously hauled Airbus subassemblies across Europe.

Variants

Only the A300-600ST variant was produced, with five aircraft built. Airbus has since introduced the larger A330-based BelugaXL as its successor for the heaviest fuselage loads.

Where you'll see it

Belugas are central to Airbus's distributed manufacturing, regularly flying complete wing sets out of Broughton (Hawarden) in North Wales, where Airbus builds wings for its airliners, to assembly lines at Toulouse and Hamburg.

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