Saint-Nazaire has been the cradle of the aeronautical industry since 1923: at first seaplanes and propeller aircrafts, today modern Airbus planes. The Airbus Atlantic plant is one of the biggest centres of excellence for the aeronautical industry in Europe. Let us take you on a two-hour guided tour through the workshops where the planes are assembled and equipped.
Airbus 4The Saint-Nazaire site specialises in assembling, equipping and testing the forward sections and central fuselages of the entire Airbus aircraft range. The whole family is represented: from the A320 –still among the world’s best-selling aircrafts– to the huge A350 models. Some fuselage sections are very impressive!
Depending on the model, final assembly operations are carried out either at Airbus’ main French plant in Toulouse or at the Airbus facility in Hamburg, Germany. Here in Saint-Nazaire you are given the unique opportunity to see the airplanes prior to final assembly: watch the rivets being lined up on a fuselage, see cabin windows being installed, observe the high-precision work done in the cockpits…
With a bit of luck, you might even see the fabulous cargo aircraft Beluga ‘Flying whale’. It regularly lands in Saint-Nazaire to pick up fuselage sections which are then taken to Toulouse or Hamburg. Not all of the sections take the Beluga, though: those of the A380 are too big even for the huge cargo compartment of the air freighter. They leave Saint-Nazaire by sea.
Airbus 1
