Airbus’s Final Beluga XL: The Maiden Flight of a Giant

The Airbus Beluga XL program has reached a new milestone with the first flight of its latest manufactured plane, which took place on Friday, July 21st.

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The aircraft, provisionally registered as F-WWYX, took off from Toulouse-Blagnac airport at 9:00 AM and landed again at 11:42 AM, after flying over the southeast of France, reaching an altitude of 35,000 feet, as can be seen in this snapshot from FlightRadar24:

The Beluga XL follows a similar concept to its predecessor, the iconic Beluga. It is based on an Airbus A330-200 with an extended upper part, enabling the transport of bulky loads necessary for the manufacturer’s logistics, with suppliers spread throughout Europe. The new version has a 30% larger capacity, able to carry, for instance, two wings of an A350 XWB instead of just one, with a range of up to 4,000 kilometers. They are equipped with Rolls Royce Trent 700 engines.

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The program was launched in 2014, foreseeing the manufacture of five aircraft, to which a sixth was added due to growing demand. The first, with the registration F-GXLH, entered service in January 2020, followed by F-GXLI in October of the same year, F-GXLJ in October 2021 and F-GXLN in September 2022. The fifth Beluga XL, registered as F-GXLG, will enter service soon, according to the sixth.

The Beluga XL fleet typically visits different Airbus production centers. In the last week, according to records in FlightRadar24, they jointly visited Toulouse, Hamburg, Bremen, Saint Nazaire, and Bordeaux. The four Beluga aircraft (derived from the A300) that Airbus still operates visit similar destinations, but in 2022, the company also made them available to the Airbus Beluga Transport unit to offer large-dimensional cargo transportation services to third parties.

See also: Airbus begins to offer its fleet for general cargo transportation

When the Beluga XL program was launched, Airbus had stated that the Belugas would continue to be used for at least five more years after the new generation aircraft entered service, to meet the growing demand.