News / Business case for commercial use of the Beluga 'was not there', says Airbus

© Craig Russell

Airbus has taken the “reluctant” decision to axe the commercialisation of its heavylift Beluga aircraft, realising “the business case was not there”.

Speaking to The Loadstar in Dubai on the sidelines of IATA’s World Cargo Symposium (WCS) today, head of freighter marketing at the French aircraft manufacturer Crawford Hamilton said it was a decision not taken lightly.

“It is not a high-payload aircraft, it is more high-volume, as we had designed it to carry aircraft parts,” said Mr Hamilton.

“When we started to look at commercialising it, we found that a business case for it was going to prove difficult, when taking in the necessary approvals and infrastructure it would require; we realised we had taken it far enough.”

But Mr Hamilton stressed that the Beluga XL still had a place within Airbus’s freight operations as it was equipped to deliver wings for its aircraft.

Asked if he thought there was any prospect of a heavylift aircraft being commercialised by another manufacturer, Mr Hamilton said: “Maybe someone else can do it, but from our point of view we just couldn’t.”

However, there is still demand for a heavylift aircraft capable of rivalling the Antonov -124.

Air Charter Service’s cargo director, Dan Morgan-Evans, has told The Loadstar that the war in Ukraine had shone a light on an aircraft thats commercial life stemmmed from a unique, “and unlikely seen again”, genesis.

“It was the break-up of the Soviet Union that gifted us the Antonovs. The Soviets had paid for them and then they fell into private hands,” Mr Morgan-Evans told The Loadstar:

“We had a fully state-funded aircraft residing in a state that just collapsed in a manner maybe we’ll never see again. It was unique because you’d never have a privately funded aircraft developed alongside the knowledge it would fly on an ad-hoc basis.”

In the 36 years since the Soviet Union collapse, there have been efforts to challenge the Antonov monopoly on the heavylift sector. Contenders included the US military C17 – both Mr Morgan-Evans and Chapman Freeborn CEO Eric Erbacher noting that Lufthansa had sought a commercial licence for that aircraft.

However, Trade and Transport Group MD and former Boeing analyst Thomas Crabtree told The Loadstar the C17 had a payload capability of less than half that of the An-124.

“At present, it is really difficult to prognosticate on what could move in that sector, and in the west, there are no airlifters either in production or on the drawing board,” Mr Crabtree added.