A Look Contained in the Airbus Manufacturing facility Revolutionizing the World of Airplanes

This story initially appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.

That is crucial second within the lifetime of an airliner: when the brand new proprietor indicators for it and picks it up, very similar to a driver selecting up a brand new automotive from a seller.

The plane in query is an Airbus A321neo, and it’s parked at Hamburg-Finkenwerder, the German metropolis’s second airport, which Airbus makes use of for testing, logistics, and supply of airplanes to prospects. Gathered across the aircraft are pilots and cabin crew, in addition to two executives from Wizz Air, the low-cost Hungarian airline that’s about to take supply of it.

Airways and producers by no means disclose how a lot they pay for particular person plane—partly as a result of costs depend upon many components, together with the variety of planes bought and the industrial historical past of every particular person airline—however shopping for a aircraft is rarely low-cost. The bottom worth of a single Airbus A321neo is estimated to be round $110 million.

This explicit aircraft, registered by Wizz Air as H9-WNM, was produced in Airbus’s Hamburg manufacturing facility in simply over a yr. The positioning is among the firm’s 4 manufacturing facilities, the others being in Toulouse, France; Cellular, Alabama; and Tianjin, China. Often known as last meeting traces (FAL), these large workshops are the place a aircraft’s structural elements, on-board electronics, hydraulic and mechanical elements, and different items all come collectively.

The ultimate arming means of an Airbus A320neo in Hamburg.{Photograph}: Antonio Dini

However earlier than these elements attain the FAL, they have to be manufactured. Some are made internally by Airbus, others by third events, and collectively making them entails dozens of factories and facilities across the globe. Then there’s the formidable logistical problem of bringing all of them collectively. This advanced ballet entails shipments by boat, prepare, street, and air, with a small fleet of particular transport planes—often called Belugas—taking part in a key function. These plane, with their prodigious girth that makes them resemble beluga whales, have been created by Airbus to maneuver massive elements similar to fuselages from one manufacturing middle to a different.