The Big Beluga

Bristolian

Bristolian

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Steve
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Today was a bit of a historic day for Filton Airfield in Bristol. The airfield has seen many historic days in it's 100 year history - first flights of The Brabazon, Britannia and (of course) Concorde as well as the last ever landing by a Concorde :crying:

The airfield's owners - Airbus - have announced it is to close later this year to make way for yet more houses. So the end of an era is soon to be upon us but why is today so special? Well, it's the last time Airbus will use their Beluga aircraft to collect wings from Filton. From today onwards all wings manufactured here will be transported by road, adding 32 hours to the time it takes to ship them to Germany ... still, that's progress for you :shrug:

So, with Beluga sat there waiting to be loaded I figured I'd better record the event for posterity and share some images with you. They're not really here for critique but feel free if you want to as I've done only some basic adjustments to them so far.

#1 - Open wide
DSC_1005-2.jpg


#2 - Loading wings
DSC_1017-2.jpg


#3 - Taxiing
DSC_1030-2.jpg


#4 - Lift-off
DSC_1039-2.jpg


#5 - Look who's watching
DSC_1041-2.jpg


#6 - Into the big blue yonder
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Hope you enjoy them :)

#5 has been sold to Bristol Evening Post & Press :D
 
Some nice shots.....I live not to far away from the Airbus factory in Broughton/Hawarden in North Wales and see these giants coming and going on the odd occasion.
 
Interesting that the airfield is to have houses built on it. In order to accommodate the Brabazon, the runway at Filton was lengthened at the expense of knocking down the village of Charlton, thereby removing many houses from the area.
 
Nice shots, it always facinates me how something so bulky can still take off lol
 
Great shots!

I can't believe I missed this today, must have driven past 4 times this morning :(
 
Very nice set of shots of a quite bizarre ship of the skies!
 
good shots!!


but what an ugly aircraft......
 
Glenn Surtees said:
Interesting that the airfield is to have houses built on it. In order to accommodate the Brabazon, the runway at Filton was lengthened at the expense of knocking down the village of Charlton, thereby removing many houses from the area.
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Yeah, I think there's some irony there somewhere. The good people of Charlton were re-housed locally and we used to live in one of the houses built for them :) When Concorde 002 was being built they didn't think the runway would be long enough for it to land on, so after it took off for the first time it flew directly to RAF Fairford where all the flight trials were run from. They subsequently found it only needed about half of the length of the Filton runway to land and stop in :bang:
 
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Thanks for the comments folks. It is an exceptional piece of aircraft engineering ... but bug-ugly :)
 
ukpbz said:
Amazing it lifts off the ground. Love the shot of it over Concorde.

If they are closing what will they do with Concorde?

Thanks
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Ever since before Concorde flew into Filton for the last time the local Councils have been discussing (i.e. avoiding making a decision) where to build an aviation museum. TBH none of them have any interest in preserving the SpeedBird and are just provaricating in the hope it'll rot and fall apart before they have to do something with it - just my cynical opinion, of course.
 
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