How Airbus Wings Came to Broughton North Wales

Developing and designing the world's largest airliner, the A380, was one thing. Where and how to build it would become one of the greatest engineering challenges of the century. Politics and scale (the individual wings were each over 100 feet long) were both greater than ever before.

Since the 1970s, Airbus had relied on its unique air transport system, "Beluga" Airbus Super Transports, to bring together Airbus sub-assemblies from all round Europe.

The new Airbus wings were expected to weigh about 77,000 pounds and the original plan was to transport each wing on top of an adapted Beluga. Another option was to build the wings in two main sections, with the outboard being made from composites. This would have enabled the Beluga to carry the sections, with only a minor mofdification required for the larger inner-wing root section. Aerospatiale, who wanted the A380 built in Toulouse, proposed using the Beluga and dividing the fuselage lengthwise into top and bottom sections. Uncertainty over the site of the final assembly line was arguably caused by the number of available choices.

Seville, Toulouse and Hamburg.

It was between Toulouse and Hamburg with Seville as a rank outsider, a political hot potato, particularly as DASA Airbus' prime bid for its Hamburg Finkenwerder site was an environmental controversy, but where would the enormous A380 wings be built?

Wing building was traditionally the UK's speciality, since Hawker Siddeley's initial contract to make the A300 wing. The West German government allocated DM 600 million, about half of which was for advanced wing work. The British Government, similarly, was lobbied by British Companies.

By 1999, the A380 wings were allocated to British Aerospace in Broughton near Chester, but the fuselage detail remained undecided. A single roll-on, roll-off ship that would make a weekly round-trip voyage taking in Aerospatiale's Saint-Nazaire factory, Chester in the United Kingdom, and Hamburg, delivering the subassemblies to support a rate of four aircraft per month, clinched it for Hamburg.

Hamburg Finkenwerder was also given the completing, furnishing, painting, and cabin production test flights. Hamburg also got responsibility for completing aircraft destined for European and Middle East customers, while Toulouse would take the rest of the world.

The production and sub-assembly transportation system was a fantastic logistical and industrial feat of planning, resulting in the Airbus multi-modal transport system (MMTS).