Airbus Military begins final assembly of the first production A400M for France »

By Jean-Michel Guhl
23 November 2011

Sevilla, 23 November 2011 –– Following the launch of A400M series production last February, Airbus Military has now begun final assembly of the first A400M that will be delivered to a customer —the French Air Force. The fuselage for this aircraft, known as MSN 007, arrived at the final assembly line in Seville (Spain) on board an Airbus Beluga airlifter. The wings and nose arrived some days earlier and the integration of the central box and outer wings has already begun. The horizontal tailplane (HTP) is expected next week and the vertical tailplane (VTP) in two weeks time.

The unloading of the A400M MSN 007 fuselage from an Airbus Beluga large volume airlifter in the A400M final assembly line in Seville (Spain). The additional picture below shows the same operation being carried for the wings and nose of the aircraft. © AMC

France is expected to receive its first A400M-180 military airlifter around the turn of the year 2012/2013 in Orléans where all the French A400M airlifters will be based at the Base Aérienne 123 in Bricy; presently home to two squadrons of C-160 Transalls and one squadron of C-130 Hercules. The Armée de l'Air expects to use its first A400Ms on long distance routes to Afghanistan at first, principally to haul back some of the large-sized equipment of the French Land Forces due to leave the Afghanistan theatre by the end of 2014.

A total of 174 aircraft have so far been ordered by Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom, South Africa having given up in 2009, one month before the A400M's first flight, a planned order for 8 aircraft. Others (still unnamed nations, among which Chile) are interested, but all of them are waiting until Airbus Military comes up with a firm export price tag — thought to be around $200 million per aircraft — for the large airlifter which programme has been dragging along for three years and which now also faces a likely further reduction from the German Air Force, whose initial order of 53 has already been cropped by 13 aircraft.

In having decided to add a civil certification to the A400M on the request of OCCAR (Organisation Conjointe de Coopération en matière d'Armement – the multinational European Common Defence Procurement Agency) in 2005, much unexpected hurdle if not true complication has been stacked on top of the European airlifter's programme. As a blatant proof of this decision which could have been postponed to a later period or on request by the different customers : out of the 3,700 flight test hours required for the whole A400M test programme, 1,400 only are military and 2,300 civil ! This is an extra burden the A400M will have to drag along like ball and chain until the test trials end, and something which explains why the A400M has been so long in the making.

The current Airbus A400M test plan is presently fully shared between the French and the Spanish divisions of the company. Aircraft MSN 001, 003 and 006 are part of the testings ran in Toulouse, France, while aircraft MSN 002 and 004 remain in Sevilla, Spain. On the total, the French will be responsible for 2,400 hours of flight testing and the Spanish for 1,970, which constitutes an aggregate of 4,370 hours of air trials considered necessary to complete the A400M by the end of 2012. MSN 005 was cancelled on account that 5 prototypes would be enough to conduct the whole testing programme.

Needless to say that this represents for AMC a very heavy test endeavour, which the partner nations of the European airlifter programme should consider with solicitude and respect. Especially since never before was such an hi-tech and strategic project completed in such a short time-frame — 10 years — when a comparable aircraft like the Boeing C-17 required 14 years to get through, even if it benefitted largely from the previous test experience logged by the comparable YC-15 between 1975 and 1979 !

Eight serial A400M-180 aircraft are already at different stages of production in Sevilla. By 2015, all of the main customers will have at least received one aircraft each, according to the plan. Then the operational life of the aircraft will really begin with a new silhouette appearing regularly on the world scene.

Source: Airbus Military

back to news »