The European aerospace giant Airbus is grounding its fleet of super-sized BelugaST freighter jets after launching a commercial cargo airline with the airplanes just over three years ago. The aircraft manufacturer cited operational difficulties in keeping the planes running as being behind its decision.
Introduced back in 1995, the specially adapted A300-600 airplanes were originally designed to carry aircraft parts between Airbus’ manufacturing plants dotted throughout Europe and were nicknamed Beluga because of their resemblance to the type of whale by the same name.
In 2022, however, the role of the BelugaST transport aircraft in ferrying aircraft parts was in serious doubt when Airbus introduced an updated and even bigger version of the jet that was appropriately called the BelugaXL.
Given that the BelugaST fleet still had a good 20 years of life left in it, Airbus couldn’t bring itself to scrap the planes, so it created its very own commercial air cargo transport company known as Airbus Beluga Transport to keep the fleet operational.
Unfortunately, Airbus now says that it is going to wind down this commercial operation because of what the company described as “serious operational difficulties” in maintaining the fleet.
It’s not that there isn’t enough demand for the Beluga’s, an Airbus spokesperson explained, but the specially trained personnel required to keep the aircraft airworthy, as well as the loading equipment required for this unique cargo plane no longer made the operation commercially viable.
What will now happen to the BelugaST fleet is still unclear, although they have been transferred to the air operator certificate of Airbus Transport International which also runs the BelugaXL planes.
One of the first use cases for the BelugaST in transporting commercial goods was flying a large helicopter from France to South Korea for a private customer. The gas-guzzling Beluga, however, needed to refuel in Poland and Russia before it eventually reached Seoul.
Airbus has suggested that customers with the kinds of outsized loads suited to the BelugaST have moved back to traditional maritime cargo transport methods.
