Introduction
Airbus Beluga XL is an advanced version of Airbus Beluga. Beluga XL is based on Airbus A330-743L. Beluga XL is slightly larger then Airbus Beluga. The purpose of this aircraft is same as that of Beluga that is to carry the aircraft parts for assembly. This aircraft made it's first test flight on June 19, 2018.
Due to the increase in production of Airbus aircrafts the current fleet of 5 Airbus Belugas was not sufficient to cope up with the need of Airbus. So, the company decided to create more cargo airplanes. This gave birth to Airbus Bulega XL.
Development
Beluga XL is based on A330 in a similar way as Beluga is based on A300. The unpainted and engineless Beluga XL. After the introduction of Beluga XL the old Belugas will not be withdrawn from the services as the main target of the Beluga and Beluga XL fleet is to fulfill the increasing demands of production line of Airbus company.
Testing
Currently as on July 25, 2019 the Beluga XL is in testing phase. It had its first flight on July 19, 2018. Beluga XL flew to various places like Bremen, Germany, Broughton, Wales in February 2019..
Beluga XL has 30% more capacity then existing Beluga and is able to carry two A350 Wings.
It is scheduled that it will join the service in late 2019. Let's hope for the same.
