CNN: Airbus Beluga XL enters service at long last

Maureen O’Hare

One of the aviation world’s most hotly anticipated planes, the Airbus Beluga XL, has entered full-time service, having made its first operational flight on January 9, 2020. At a time when jumbo passenger airliners such as the Airbus A380 and Boeing 747 are on their way out, the Beluga XL — the first of six — will be one of the biggest beasts in the skies. You won’t be able to travel in it, but the Beluga will play a crucial part of the construction of many of the commercial passenger planes we’ll all be flying on over the decades to come. The super-transporter cargo plane is designed by Airbus to fly its aircraft components between production sites in Europe and its final assembly lines in Toulouse, France; Hamburg, Germany; and Tianjin, China.