Giant New Jetliner
Faces Jumbo Problem:
Assembly Required
LEVIGNAC, France -- Two enormous flatbed trucks with a police escort crawled through this dusty town Nov. 14, carrying what looked like brontosaurus skeletons.
At 11:30 on the starry Friday night, townspeople poured out to watch the slow-motion parade. The outsize latticework cargo was a low-tech dummy representing the dimensions of pieces of an Airbus A380, the European plane maker's planned double-decker jetliner. The trucks and their 96-wheel trailers were out for a spin to see whether they could squeeze down the main street and make a 149-mile cross-country trek. As technicians ran alongside removing road signs and other obstructions, the massive objects inched forward, towering over the town's two-story buildings.
Wooden mock-ups of pieces of Airbus's giant A380 airliner move through the town of Levignac, France.
Airbus calls the A380, which will seat as many as 800 passengers, "the Eighth Wonder of the World." And putting together its giant pieces is one of the world's most formidable jobs. Assembly of 121 planes the company currently has on order is slated to begin next spring.
The massive wings and fuselage sections -- some of which stand four stories tall and weigh more than 100 tons -- will travel by sea on a custom-built ferry. They then will move along a river on barges that can lower themselves several feet in the water in order to dip beneath a Napoleonic stone bridge, and finally down roads on tractor-trailers with self-leveling hydraulic suspension. The barges navigate using electronics similar to an airplane's autopilot guidance equipment, while the trucks orient themselves with Global Positioning System satellites. The trailers carrying A380 wings, which are half the length of a football field, were tested in a wind tunnel because an unexpected strong gust might toss an entire vehicle off the road.
"It's a complex system made of simple things," says Jesus Morales, the head of all A380 transportation. Since Airbus began production in 1971, it has used something much more modern to ship airplane parts: an airplane. But the A380 is so big, no other plane can carry its pieces.
Airbus needs an elaborate transportation system because its factories are scattered around Europe. Each one builds a specific section of every plane -- such as the tail, wings or cockpit -- and packs it off for final assembly in Toulouse, France, or Hamburg, Germany. Managers say the shipping of parts accounts for just a small part of an A380's catalog price of about $250 million. Spreading jobs, meanwhile, allows Airbus to tap as many skilled workers -- and political boosters -- as possible.
Airbus's rival Boeing Co. makes planes in smaller pieces, so it has always shipped parts by conventional truck, train and boat. Boeing currently has plans to start using a plane to ship big pieces of its proposed new model, the 7E7 Dreamliner.
Mr. Morales, an aerospace engineer and 20-year Airbus veteran, spent three years traveling around Europe analyzing how to ship the gargantuan A380 parts. The more sophisticated modes of transport he rejected included muscular Russian helicopters, Hindenburg-size blimps and hovercraft. He also decided against strapping the wings atop a jetliner and flying them piggyback, like a surfboard on the roof of a car.
Yet even using "simple things" to move the monstrous A380 parts isn't simple. Mr. Morales's Rube Goldberg-esque vision has required building a floating dock, a canal lock to lift the barges, and five new parking areas for the trucks to stop along their way.
Initially Airbus wanted to drive the straightest road route, but a regional governor stood in its way. Jean Francois-Poncet says his opposition in early 2001 was a "tactical" maneuver to win compensation in exchange for the "nuisance" of A380 convoys. "We said, 'Sorry, but we found a better route,' " says Airbus spokesman Jacques Rocca.
Establishing the new transport system cost about $370 million, of which Airbus is paying about one-third. The French government and the private companies that will handle shipping are covering the rest.
Developing and building the A380 itself costs around $11 billion. When Airbus starts test-flying the plane in 2005, it will be the biggest passenger jet ever built, about one-third larger than the largest Boeing 747 jumbo jet.
Airbus's bloated cargo aircraft, dubbed a "beluga" for its resemblance to the whale, has the highest volume of any airplane flying. But it still isn't big enough to carry pieces of the A380. Hence Mr. Morales's surface journey, which can take up to three weeks for some parts.
So, parts from Germany, Britain, Spain and northern France will arrive at the port of Bordeaux in a ferry recently built in China. Using the floating dock, built in Poland, they move to barges now being built in the Netherlands for a 59-mile cruise up the Garonne River. To avoid hurting the delicate parts in transfer, each one is attached to a base that workers can grab -- similar to the way parts of a plastic airplane model come out of the box attached to a frame.
If the river is high, the boats take on water to sink more than 3 feet, in order to slide under the graceful arches of the 181-year-old Pont de Pierre commissioned by Napoleon, and then pump out the water.
Each A380 will then require a convoy of six giant trailers with police and security escorts stretching 1.24 miles. Police will close off traffic in front of and behind the convoys. At a maximum speed of 15 miles per hour, the trip to Toulouse takes three days because the convoys will move by night. The French government has redone the entire 159-mile route, including 18 miles of new bypass routes around five towns, to handle the trucks' weight and size.
One town that didn't get bypassed was Levignac, 11 miles from the assembly plant. So, as Airbus conducted its first test-run of the convoy, residents spilled out to see the skeletal frames of wood, wire and metal tubes roll down their newly widened main street.
"It's funny," said one young woman watching the scene. "We get a new road for an airplane."
欧洲小镇上的庞然大物
11月14日，两辆由警察护送的巨型平台卡车载著形似恐龙骨架的巨大物件缓慢穿过法国拉维那克(LEVIGNAC)这个尘土飞扬的小镇。
周五夜晚，星光灿烂。11点30分，镇上的居民们纷纷赶来观看这个慢动作前进的队伍。这些特大的格子状货物按空中客车(Airbus)A380客机各部件的尺寸来设计，用一些低科技含量的材质制作而成。A380是这家欧洲飞机制造厂即将推出的双层客机。卡车和96个车轮的拖车在进行一次演习，看是否能从这条主路上挤过去，完成149英里的越野跋涉。随著车辆的缓慢前进，技术人员要拆掉沿途的路牌和其它障碍物。这些庞然大物使路旁的双层房子相形见绌。
空中客车公司的巨型客机A380部件的木制模型从法国拉维那克镇穿过。
空中客车公司把这款能装载800名乘客的飞机称为“世界第八奇迹”。而把它的庞大部件组装起来也是世界上最浩大的工程之一。明年春季，该公司将开始装配目前已下订单的121架飞机。
庞大的机翼和机身──有的有四层楼那么高，重量超过100吨──将用专门定制的渡轮装载，然后转用驳船沿河运送。这些驳船能自动沉入水中几英尺，以便从一座拿破仑时代的石桥下穿过。最后，陆路运输采用带自流平液压悬挂的牵引拖车。驳船的导航采用类似飞机自动驾驶导航设备的电子仪器，而卡车则能在全球定位系统卫星的辅助下自动导航。运送A380机翼的拖车之前已经经过风洞测试，因为机翼有半个足球运动场的长度，而一阵预料之外的大风可能把整辆车从道路上掀翻。
“这是个由简单物件组成的复杂系统。”负责整个A380装运工程的莫拉莱斯(Jesus Morales)如是说。从1971年开始生产起，空中客车一直使用较为先进的运输工具来运载零部件：飞机。但A380实在太庞大了，没有别的飞机能够运载它的部件。
空中客车需要如此精细的运输系统是因为其工厂分布在欧洲不同地方。每个工厂生产每架飞机的一部份，如机尾、机翼、驾驶舱，然后包装、运送到法国图卢兹或德国汉堡组装。管理者称，部件运输费用只占A380目录价（约2.5亿美元）的很小一部份。另外，这样的分工使空中客车能够得到尽可能多的熟练工人和政治拥护者。
空中客车的竞争对手波音公司把飞机分成小部件来生产，因此一直用普通卡车、火车和轮船运输。波音目前计划开始使用飞机来运输其新款客机7E7 Dreamliner的大部件。
身为航空工程师的莫拉莱斯是在空中客车工作了20年的老将，他花了三年时间环游欧洲，分析怎样运输庞大的A380部件。已经被他排除掉的较为先进的运输方式包括马力强大的俄罗斯直升机、与兴登堡飞船(Hindenburg)大小相当的小型飞船以及气垫船。他也排除了把机翼绑在飞机顶上的做法──这样像在汽车车顶上方绑一块冲浪板。
甚至用“简单的工具”来搬运A380的庞大部件也是件费劲的差事。莫拉莱斯的“化简为繁”的想法需要修建一个浮动码头、一个提高驳船水位的运河水闸和五个让卡车沿途停放的新泊车区。
空中客车公司原先想采用最直的陆路线路，但遭到一名地区长官的阻拦。让?法朗索瓦?蓬塞(Jean Francois-Poncet)称，他在2001年初加以阻挠是想“巧妙地”索取赔偿金，以补偿A380部件运输造成的“麻烦”。空中客车发言人雅克?罗克(Jacques Rocca)则回应道：“我们说‘抱歉，我们已经找到更好的路线了’。”
建立这个新的运输系统要花费3.7亿美元，空中客车公司只支付大约三分之一。法国政府和处理运输事宜的私营公司支付余下的部份。
A380本身的研发和制造费用约110亿美元。空中客车将于2005年试飞A380，届时A380将是有史以来最大的客机，比目前最大的波音747还要大三分之一。
空中客车的大型货机--由于外形酷似鲸而被称为“白鲸”--是目前容量最大的飞机，但仍然装不下A380的部件。这样就有了莫拉莱斯的运输方案，这个运输方案在运送某些部件时可能要花上三周的时间。
因此，德国、英国、西班牙和法国北部生产的部件将用一艘近期由中国制造的渡轮运达波尔多港(Bordeaux)。接著经由波兰制造的浮动码头搬到驳船上，沿加伦河逆流航行59英里。这些驳船目前正在荷兰制造。为了在运输过程中不损坏这些精密零件，每个部件都被固定在一个工人能抓住的基座上──就像被固定在框架上的塑料飞机模型零件从盒子中拿出来时的样子。
如果河水水位高，轮船就会沉入水中3英尺多，以便从那座有181年历史、当年由拿破仑下令建造的古石桥的优美桥拱下穿过，然后船再升回水面。
每架A380部件的运输都需要六辆巨型拖车运送，护送的警察和安全护航队伍将长达1.24英里。警察将在运送车辆的前后清理道路。车队以最高每小时15英里的速度行进，要花三天才能到达图卢兹(Toulouse)，原因是车队在夜晚行驶。法国政府重修了整个159英里长的道路，包括绕过五个小镇的18英里的新建道路，以便让道路能适应卡车的重量和大小。
有一个镇车队没有绕过：拉维那克。该镇离装配厂11英里。因此，当空中客车公司第一次试行的时候，居民们纷纷涌到到路旁观看，看著这些木架、电线和金属管从他们新近扩建的主路上慢慢挪过。
“很有趣，”一位旁观的年轻女子说。“因为一架飞机，我们有了一条新马路。”
