Max Kingsley-Jones/LONDON
Super Airbus Transport International(SATIC) and Airbus believe that the growing success of the Beluga's third party cargo charter business could see an external market develop for the aircraft with outsized cargo carriers.
The A300-600 based Beluga was designed, built and certificated for Airbus by the Toulouse-based Aerospatiale/Daimler-Benz Aerospace joint venture SATIC, which has delivered three aircraft to Airbus Transport International (ATI). This recently established "airline" division is actively seeking external business for the Beluga fleet in between commitments to move subassemblies to plants for the Airbus production schedule.
The Beluga's 7m-diameter cargo bay makes it competitive with the Antonov An-124 in terms of volume for outsized freight. So far, unsolicited external demand has far outstripped supply, says division director of business development Arnaud Martin.
Only 130h were available for third party work in 1997, so eight out of ten requests had to be turned away, he says, adding that, with the fleet growing to four aircraft in June, capacity should be boosted to 600h this year and around 1,000h in 1999. ATI has ordered a fifth aircraft for delivery in 2001 which will effectively allow one to be dedicated to third party work.
"We have been approached by almost all the An-124 operators and brokers, as well as all the US manufacturers of large space hardware," says Martin.
SATIC has no marketing function, but Airbus has discussed the possibility of supplying new build Belugas to carriers such as FedEx. SATIC says that a A300-based Beluga would be priced at "about half" the $175 million sticker price for the Boeing MD-17. Three-year lead times mean that any order would not be available until 2001/2.
Airbus senior vice president commercial John Leahy is more cautious about the Beluga's prospects, saying that the small numbers involved would make it difficult to keep the unit cost much below that of an MD-17.
Source: Flight International
