Beluga as a commercial freighter?

[Buster Hyman]

I've had a quick search & couldn't see this as being discussed thoroughly before, if it has, I apologise for going over old ground Ratty!

The Beluga has recently come through Oz for the AVV airshow & I was wondering how feasible it would be to market it as a short range type of freighter. I imagine it's niche would be just like the spoke & hub of the pax carriers, supporting the "big dogs".

A market, like Oz, would be perfect for this type of freighter. It would allow smaller ports to feed the major gateways with pre-built units etc.

Any thoughts chaps, or would you like some of what I'm smoking!!;) :D :rolleyes:

[Dan Winterland]

Nice idea, but the Beluga is a specialist freighter built to carry airbus sections between the various airbus factories. Aircraft sections tend to be low density, i.e, voluminous but light. It's based on an A300 which in the freighter guise only had a load of 35 tonnes (I think) which doesn't make it particularly useful compared with a 747 freighter at about 110 tonnes.

The Beluga is available for freight charters from Airbus I believe.

[CR2]

Nurries Buster,
The Beluga is available for charter. Only thing is that range is miserable; if I remember the Airbus briefing, needs two tech stops to go trans Atlantic at max payload (40T I think). Blockhour price was staggering.

(BTW Buster, tell whoever went to AVV, sorry about pdu 4R. Died on me in MUC Friday during loading).

[Buster Hyman]

...It wasn't me!! :D

They had fun though, manually pushed out B1 & opened the nose for A1 & A2. Pity BKK didn't spray the acft though, meant they all stood around in the rain waiting!!! :D :D :D

[seacue]

The Beluga is optimised for shipping a lot of air. By that I mean large, but very low density, items such as aircraft sections (or whole aircraft) - which are just a bit of structure surrounding a _LOT_ of air. A Beluga would be fine for shipping feathers, but doesn't seem to make sense for average- or high-density items.