Airbus waves goodbye to Beluga number 1

On 27 April, the very first produced Beluga, F-GSTA (655) flew its final flight for Airbus Transport International. It flew from Hamburg-Finkenwerder to Toulouse-Blagnac where it arrived at 21:14 local time.

Airbus is replacing the five A300-600STs with six A330-700STs, the so called BelugaXL. This heavily modified A330 is able to carry 30% more payload compared to the A300-600ST, which was first introduced in 1995.

This is actually not the first Beluga retired by Airbus but the second. The first retired A300-600ST was Beluga 2, F-GSTB (751), which has been put into storage at Bordeaux on 6 October 2020. It's expected that Beluga 1 will fly to Bordeaux soon.

Photo by Airbus.