Airbus A380 fuselage sections arrive in Dresden – closure of the motorway for transport to airport

Approximately two weeks ago, barges set out on their voyage from the Hamburg Airbus plant with the three fuselage sections of the largest and most modern passenger aircraft in the world on board. After approximately 570 km on the Elbe, they reached the Saxon capital yesterday. On Friday and Saturday nights, their valuable freight will be unloaded from 11 pm by a crane which will take up position next to the motorway bridge near Kaditz. The heavy machinery, which can lift up to 800 tons, will carefully unload the freight from the barges on the Elbe onto special lowloaders on the motorway during the two nights.

The A4 between the Dresden-Altstadt and Dresden-Neustadt junctions, in the direction of Görlitz, will be closed to all traffic for about two hours, both for the duration of the loading and for the subsequent transport. This closure is currently scheduled to occur on Friday and Saturday nights, from 11 pm to 1 am. Police will reroute traffic accordingly. The special transport trucks containing the Airbus sections will initially take the A4 from the bridge over the Elbe to the Hellerau exit. From there they will continue through the districts of Hellerau and Rähnitz to the premises of Dresden airport. The final stop is the IABG/IMA A380 test facility at Dresden airport.

IABG - Transport via motorway of the rear fuselage of the airbus a380 (Quelle: IABG)Once in the hangar, the A380 fuselage sections will be integrated into the test setup and assembled by an Airbus team. IABG and IMA engineers will complete the test setup and test the system until August 2005. In September of next year, the largest fatigue test ever to have been performed on a civilian aircraft will commence. It will simulate approx. 47,500 flights over a period of 26 months. This corresponds to a service life time of approximately 25 years for an Airbus A380. During the flight of an Airbus A380, the aircraft is exposed to many stresses that are simulated as in real life by the test system. After 5,000 successfully simulated flights the Airbus A380 can commence operations with airlines in 2006, while the durability test will continue until 2008.

In autumn of 2002, Airbus had commissioned IABG to carry out the life service test on the A380. The high-tech company from Ottobrunn has more than 40 years of experience in this field. IABG then commissioned its partner IMA to plan the technical and logistical side of the transport of the unit to be tested from Hamburg to Dresden. IMA had already developed the logistics for the transport of the A380 components from Hamburg in 2000, as a prerequisite for the fatigue test in Dresden. With the assistance of Deutsche Binnenreederei and the forwarding agencies Kübler (from Schwäbisch-Hall) and Thömen, the three fuselage sections have reached Saxony unscathed. All that is missing now are the two wings. They are currently still on the Elbe and are expected to arrive in Dresden at the beginning of October.