Yesterday (was it only yesterday?) we spent the morning at the Airbus facility outside Toulouse, which employs 4,000 workers in 3 shifts round-the clock, and 56,000 workers in the cooperative production effort between France, Germany, UK and Spain which was made possible by the UK-France collaboration on the Concorde back in the 1970s.
The scope of the projects are staggering, and the ingenuity mind-boggling. For example, there are numerous structures that cover 10 hectres each (the size of 300 tennis courts, if you can imagine that). One of the buildings has more steel -- seen as exterior skeletal supports -- than the Eiffel Tower, an onsite energy plant, underground fuel lines to more efficiently fuel up the A380 with its 310,000 litre capacity which is considered "green" because it uses only 2.9 litres of fuel per passenger per 100 km flown compared to the industry average of 3.3 litres and the Concorde which used 15 litres.
Various parts are manufactured in the different countries' 16 plants and shipped to Toulouse for assembly. In order to move some of the huge parts from the French port to the inland plant, an elaborate multi-modal transport system had to be designed along with special trucks with side lasers to guide them through narrow French town streets. That one trip takes 3 nights.
Then 23,500 rivets are hand installed to attach the fusilage and wings to the oval-shaped body. The engines, ordered by the customers (airlines or sheiks) are made by Mercedes Benz or Engine Alliance (GE) and account for a third of the roughly $300 million U.S. price tag. After the planes are put together, they're shipped to Hamburg for painting with 2 tons of talcum-laden paint. With a goal of 450 deliveries per year in 2010, up from 275 in 2007, it seems like investing in talcum could be a good bet. You read it here first.
The security at this place was extensive – barbed wire fences, giving up our cameras and, normally at such site, relinquishing our passport; but because we were with Maison de la France we were allowed entrance into the gift shop where we were held prisoners for nearly an hour, and many succumbed to purchasing TV and keychains.
After all the data (I spared you some details) and shuttled around by a guide who is German but speaks English with a French accent, we were taken to the site of the first test Concorde, a small, narrow plane boasting 60’s orange decor. Only 24 were ever made (including 4 test planes) to fly beyond the speed of sound at 18,000 meters into the stratosphere carrying 100 passengers who, for about 8000 euros each, were able to buy themselves a few more hours in Paris or New York and see two sunrises in 3-1/2 hours.
After the accident at CDG (Paris), wherein the rear tires exploded and punctured the fuel tank in the wing, Concorde stopped flying in 2003. It was not economically fesible…not to mention it made a deafening noise, polluted terribly and required one crewmember to open valves en route and siphon 10 tons of kerosene from one chamber to another to stablize the plane on takeoffs and landings.
However, it did provide some breakthroughs, like cooperation between European nations (UK and France) and technical advances like electronic control systems, telon, ABS breaks and carbon fibers.
For me, it was one of those experiences that is more interesting in retrospect than it was at the time.
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