World's strangest-looking airplane? A closer look at the Airbus 'Beluga'
BLAGNAC, France – The airplane is one that turns heads.
Aviation enthusiasts instinctively know it is the "Beluga," a nickname stemming from the aircraft's uncanny resemblance to the whale of the same name.
But nearly all who see it tend to agree that regardless of its name, it's one of the world's strangest-looking aircraft.
Nicknamed the Beluga, it's technically the Airbus A300-600ST. The aircraft initially was called the Super Transporter in the 1990s when it began to phase out a earlier transport model dubbed the "Super Guppy." Eventually the A300-600ST took on the name of the whale many say it resembles.
The plane is used by European jetmaker Airbus to ferry aircraft and extra-large cargo. It's especially useful for the company in moving large plane parts from its production facilities to its assembly lines.
The Beluga is capable of holding the wings of an A340 widebody. It also is capable of transporting the fuselage section of Airbus' newest widebody jet, the A350.
Such oversized parts would otherwise be difficult or impossible to fit into typical transport aircraft.
Airbus also offers Belugas to third parties on a charter basis via the company's transport subsidiary.
Airbus created its supersize transport by cutting the top section off one of its Airbus A300 widebody jet models and then adding a bubble-shaped additional fuselage to the airframe. The A300 is no longer in production.
The aircraft celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2014, and Airbus plans an even bigger version of the transport plane – the A330-based Beluga XL – in 2019.
Boeing, of course, has its own special transport plane for flying oversized items. Boeing's is a modified 747, which was designed largely to transport pieces of the Dreamliner — which explains the "Dreamlifter" name that Boeing gave to its equivalent of the A300-600ST.
Today in the Sky got an up-close look at the aircraft earlier this year during a tour of Airbus' facilities in France and Germany. Check out the photos at the top for a closer look at the aircraft, or scroll to the middle of this post for additional photos from our archives. Scroll down for a look at Boeing's Dreamlifter with photos from that aircraft mistakenly landed at a small airport in Kansas.
