Airbus Ship

[hiflier]

Approximately once a month a ship moors at Mostyn dock in north Wales, and as Airbus is written in large letters on the side it is a no-brainer as to the operator. I believe that it carries wings for fitting onto airbus arcraft at other factories in Europe, and the ship can only navigate the Dee estuary at the monthly spring tides. I want to know 1/ how do the wings get from Hawarden where thay are assembled to Mostyn 2/ why do they use a ship at all when there already is a near-daily cargo service by Airbus Beluga aircraft from Hawarden to other Airbus factories in Europe and 3/ where does the ship sail to after leaving Mostyn.

[jno]

onto a sandbank, apparently...

https://walesairforum.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/airbus-wings-ship-ciudad-de-cadiz-stuck-on-dee-estuary-sandbank/

[ABerrant]

1. Manufactured wings for the massive Airbus A380 aircraft leave Mostyn on the ship Ville De Bordeaux, after travelling down the River Dee by barge from the Airbus wing factory.

2. Transportation of components and sub-structures of existing Airbus models was facilitated by air, using the specially developed A300-600ST Beluga aircraft. As the major components and sub-assembly structures of the A380 were too big for the A300-600ST, Airbus were forced to choose between keeping open their diverse existing European factory infrastructure, or finding a way of transporting the components to final assembly plant in Toulouse. Airbus choose to keep the plants diversified, using sea and road transport.

3. Starting in Hamburg-Finkenwerder on the River Elbe, the ship loads the front and rear sections of the fuselage, from where they are shipped to the United Kingdom. The wings, which are manufactured at Filton in Bristol and Broughton, Flintshire in North Wales, are transported by barge to Mostyn docks, where the ship adds them to its cargo. In Saint-Nazaire in western France, the ship trades the fuselage sections from Hamburg for larger, assembled sections, some of which include the nose. The ship unloads in Bordeaux. Afterwards, the ship picks up the belly and tail sections by Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA in Cádiz in southern Spain, and delivers them to Bordeaux. From there, the A380 parts are transported by barge to Langon, and by the oversize road convoys of the Itinéraire à Grand Gabarit from there to the assembly hall in Toulouse. After assembly, the aircraft are flown to Hamburg Finkenwerder Airport (XFW) to be furnished and painted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mostyn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ville_De_Bordeaux

[merlinone]

the wings are too big to fit in the transport plane