Developing and designing the world’s largest airliner was equaled only by the massive challenges of where and how to build it. The chosen assembly site would become home to one of the greatest engineering accomplishments of the century and a towering symbol of European industrial success. Try as it might to keep the selection process from becoming mired in politics, everyone within Airbus recognized the task would not be easy.
Once more it was J¸rgen Thomas who was at the forefront of the tough decision-making process when the study to find an assembly site was launched in mid-1996. The sheer scale of the A3XX meant that this was a selection process like no other. Given that the horizontal tailplane was roughly equal in size to the wing of the A310, and that the double-deck fuselage sections and the individual wings were each over 100 feet long, it was immediately obvious that the existing airborne transport system would not do.
With a land and sea transport network in the frame for the first time, the Airbus study looked at both inland and coastal locations. “We have to consider the relative advantages of transporting smaller components by aircraft to a potential inshore site, against the ability to carry complete subassemblies by ship to a coastal location,” Thomas said in Flight International in late 1996.
Since its first aircraft was assembled in the 1970s, Airbus had relied on its unique air transport system to bring together subassemblies from all around Europe. The first-generation Super Guppy fleet was gradually being phased out in favor of the faster jet-powered “Beluga” Airbus Super Transports derived from the A300-600 airliner. But even though the planned A3XX subassemblies far exceeded the capacity of the larger Beluga, the air link supporters were not about to give up without a struggle.