Friday, April 29, 2016

Airbus Industries, the site.

Big, very big, everything in sight is larger than life.  The buildings are enormous, the pavement, acres of it, covers all the land between the numerous buildings.  Planes of huge size are parked neatly alongside each other along the 2 plus miles of runway, of which there are 2 plus all the taxiways thrown in for amusement.  It is...big! 

Our tickets were dispensed by a very pretty staff person in the reception center, filled with few exhibits including a model A380 made out of toy building blocks and a souvenir shop which we caroused.  It began to rain, whole buckets of rain, the roar of it hitting the roof sounded like jet noise.  Then a bus pulled up and we were called to board it, however it was some 150 feet away and the pouring rain was now creating lakes and runoff making the run to the bus a very wet experience.  That could have been thought out better that's for sure, hope it's a sunny day when you go.


The bus lumbered it's way a short distance to a huge building that appeared to be 4-in-oneas the outline of one section of the building was duplicated three more times.  It was fully 1/4 mile in width!
And contained 4 A380's!  Wings had been mounted, tail assemblies were in place but the nose cones were not as of yet, installed. 

Now the sad part, we were told (and most respected the request) that we were not to photograph ANYTHING we saw!  So, I was thwarted and disappointed.  To actually witness the size and massiveness of the machinery as well of the buildings and planes and NOT take pictures?!  Blasphemy! Nonetheless, we had a great time, the crowd was small and polite as could be and came from many nations, demonstrated by the many  languages spoken.  




Off to Toulouse...

Toulouse was our first stop being it was about 300 miles south of Lignieres and home to Airbus Industries.  So on Friday morning some 7 weeks ago we joined the very few on the A71 and drove south through Claremont-Ferrand.   I was interested in us getting a tour of the manufacturing plant where the Airbus aircraft were assembled.  We had gotten our reservations when we were in California and now we would get our tickets to see one of the biggest factories in the world!  I've seen Boeing's in Seatle and it is impressive but this is supposed to be much bigger, so we would see.
 
The Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle was the world's first short/medium-range jet airliner, produced by the French Sud Aviation firm. Its maiden flight occurred in 1955.


 Kelly on her way through the rain drenched parking lot to the reception hall at Airbus Industries.


The Airbus A400M Atlas is a multi-national four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft.