Airbus A380 in Arizona

I suspect that what he saw was a combination of wry humor and a chunk of the
fuselage of one of those a/c specially rebuilt to haul "Wide Loads" on its
way from the boneyard to scrap, Tucson being the site of the US's largest
boneyard. There's one model built on the "chassis" of the old Boeing
Stratocruiser/C-97 which has an enormous diameter.

Those "Pregnant Guppy" type of planes have been around a while,
actually. The need originated with the space program, which had to
transport bulky (up to 20 foot diam.), albeit not proportionately
heavy, objects without either the delays of sea cargo or the need to
close roads and find a way around every low bridge and power line
between the manufacturers' sites and vehicle assembly -- especially
problematic in when the Interstate highway system was still young and
partial.


Boeing recently turned a used 747 into a "Large Cargo Freighter" that
they say is for in-house use to transport fuselage sections, as well as
wings, for the 787.
(http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers.../ts_sf05.html).
The Airbus equivalent is nicknamed the "Beluga" for instantly obvious
reasons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_Beluga)

I don't know whether either of them would be quite up to A380 fuselage
sections, nor whether that would even be needed. They use specialized
ships and barges for the big parts, except some or all of the
empennage, which goes via Beluga, I think. Getting A380 pieces to
look like an airplane involves dizzying logistics and a lot of modes
and miles of surface transport. Probing around on
http://www.airbus.com/en/ gives an idea (hopefully there's a non-Flash,
low-graphics version for those who don't have broadband).

Cheers,
--Joe "Oversize load" Chew