Turkey ships body parts of 400M jets

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

A Beluga, known as the largest plane of the world, uploads body parts of a A400M plane, which were developed in Turkey for the Airbus company. Company photo

Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) has shipped two sets of body parts for a military transport aircraft, known as A400M, to Bremen, Germany, where they will be assembled.

A Beluga, the largest cargo plane in the world, picked up some A400M body parts on Nov. 7 from the capital city of Ankara that were produced in Turkey by TAI, Turkey’s main aerospace firm, according to a company press release.

The first shipment of A400M body parts from Turkey was made June. 21. More shipments of body parts are planned for January, March and June of next year.

The body of the plane will be transported from Bremen to Seville, Spain, where the new generation cargo plane is being built.

The giant military transport aircraft, A400M, is designed by Airbus. It features four engines developed by Rolls Royce and MTU, has a capacity of 37 tons and a cruising altitude of 13,300 meters. The most important feature of the aircraft is its ability to take off on a 750-meter air strip with a load of 25 tons.
The project is financed and carried out by a consortium of nations including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Flight test activities continue for the first five aircrafts in Seville and Toulouse, France. The first aircraft is scheduled to be delivered to a customer in December 2012, according to TAI’s official website.
TAI and a number of other local firms are taking part in the aircraft’s production.

EADS nine-month profits jump

European aerospace group EADS, which controls Airbus, reported flat profits for the third quarter yesterday but a more than doubling of the net figure for the first nine months of the year. The group, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, stood by its outlook for growth
for the whole of the year, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday.

The net figure for the third quarter was 309 million euros ($394.5 million) from 312 million euros in the same period of last year, representing a fall of 1.0 percent, the group said in a statement. In the first nine months, however, the net outcome was 903 million euros ($1.15 billion) from 421 million euros for the same period of last year.