FLUG REVUE April 2002: A380 production started

AIRBUS FACTORIES GETTING READY FOR THE A380

By Sebastian Steinke

When a huge aviation project such as the Airbus A380 is finally officially launched, to the outside world the initial work phase seems relatively quiet. Hundreds of engineers in research and development offices are designing the components of the future aircraft, devising the production sequences and allowing a vision through to the first flight to take shape. Already in 2003, a year before the maiden flight, 3,000 Airbus employees will be working directly on the A380. A total of almost 5 billion Euro is to flow into this key Airbus project that for the Europeans signifies at last breaking the monopoly enjoyed by the Boeing 747 for several decades in the upper market segment.

Airbus A380F

While the Airbus sales department has already notched up 85 firm orders for the A380, preparatory work for the European showpiece project is proceeding at a number of locations.

Thus the end of January saw the start of the "hot phase” of the A380 programme as far as Nantes, France is concerned, as the first T-shaped parts for the central wing box of the European mega-liner have been machined. To save weight, Airbus is using some new materials on the A380. For this reason, over half of this component is to be made of carbon fibre.

Nantes, nearby St. Nazaire and Meaulte are all important locations for the A380 programme, as it is here that the massive front and centre segments of the A380's fuselage are to come into being. The factory in St. Nazaire is therefore expanding its floor space by 5000m², while Nantes is quadrupling its production area. Computer-controlled milling and riveting machines are to be employed in order to reduce production costs. As a result the region as a whole will be able to boast of being France's second most important aerospace industry location after Toulouse. 1,895 employees will be building wing boxes for Airbus and ATR, and another 2,280 will work in St. Nazaire on pre-assembly of the fuselages which will then be delivered to either Hamburg or Toulouse.

From the middle of this year the first structural milled parts will be fabricated in Varel, north Germany and the first stressed-skin fuselages destined for assembly into fuselage sections in Hamburg from the first quarter of 2003 will be built in Nordenham. At the same time as production gets under way in Varel, Airbus UK will start manufacturing wings for the A380 in Filton. For this purpose an extra wing factory is being built in Broughton, Wales so that the first A380 wings can begin their journey to Toulouse at the beginning of 2004.

The long-established aerospace location of Hamburg, which only recently was in the limelight as the setting for the maiden flight of the A318, will host some particularly important work for the A380. Fuselage segments for the biggest Airbus model are to be built on the River Elbe, while the nearby Stade factory will produce the enormous vertical tailplanes. The finished modules will then be taken by ship to the Garonne estuary in France and from there by special lorry to Toulouse where they will join A380 components built by the other Airbus partners and suppliers for final assembly. For this purpose, amongst other things, a 416m long, 250m wide and 46m high final assembly facility that is linked to the airport network by two taxiways is to be constructed in Toulouse on a 380 hectare plot under the name of "Aeroconstellation”.

Once full production gets under way here in the 100,000m2 facility in 2008, 2,000 workers could be assembling up to four A380's per month. Building of a hangar for static trials on the A380 also got under way at the start of this year. In addition, 1,000 engineers should be working in the new 23,000m2 design building from January 2003.

All A380's finished in Toulouse will then be flown back to north Germany for completion in Finkenwerder. The planes will then be painted in Hamburg and distributed according to sales market. Whereas the aircraft destined for customers in Europe and the Middle East are to be delivered from Hamburg, the other planes will be flown back to the south of France, from where the remaining customer deliveries will take place.

But before A380 production can get under way in Hamburg, the site needs to be prepared. This includes filling in the "Mühlenberg Loch”, a 140-hectare extension of the Elbe that was excavated decades ago to serve as a runway for seaplanes, with sand and stabilising it with sheet pilings and concrete elements. Within a year the first hangars for section assembly will be ready. The first of these is to be 350m long, 120m wide and 26m high. Directly next to it, the completion facility, two paintshops, a flight preparation hangar and a dry run facility are to be built. A separate cargo harbour will be used to minimise delays in loading the Airbus transport ships. The massive A380 segments are too big for Airbus to want to continue transporting them with the special Beluga transporter.

Expansion of the extremely cramped factory premises in Finkenwerder was initially opposed by local residents and environmentalists, but due to the far-reaching importance of the A380 project to the industry and labour market of the city and region, Hamburg decided to allow it anyway. According to Airbus spokesman David Voskuhl, the A380 programme will create 2,000 jobs directly at Airbus and another 2,000 jobs among its suppliers in Germany alone. Nevertheless, every effort is being taken to minimise the upheaval caused by the expansion work to the neighbourhood. Thus Finkenwerder runway is to be lengthened only from 2,321m to the still very modest 2,684m to allow the A380 to operate safely out of it.

The biggest passenger aircraft in the world will be casting its silhouette not only over Airbus's own factories but also among its international suppliers. Airbus has meanwhile selected its major suppliers. For example, Eaton has been chosen to produce the A380 hydraulic lines. The electronic flight management system (FMS) for the huge four-engined jet is to be supplied by Honeywell, which saw off the competition from Thales/Smith. The FMS will be based on Honeywell's Pegasus system but with improved capability and a new graphical interface and is expected to be certified in 2005.

While production of the European mega-project takes shape, the first customers are pushing ahead with their plans. A380 launch customer Emirates, which increased its A380 order on the occasion of the last Dubai Airshow to 22 units including two freighters, plans to use its A380-800's, the first of which will be arriving in 2006, in three different operational roles: on medium-range regional routes with very high passenger demand, on medium-range and long-range routes with slightly weaker demand, and on longhaul routes to the USA, on which full use will be made of the range. Emirates wants to deploy its medium-range variant with a 510t take-off weight, whereas its longhaul variant is to have a take-off weight of up to 560t. It has not yet decided on the engines.

From page 20 of FLUG REVUE 4/2002

Last updated 8 March 2002

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