Adorable Marine Mammal-Inspired Airplane Is the Cutest Thing in the Skies
Usually, planes are- forgive the pun- pretty plain. Sure, airlines will sometimes decorate their planes to an extent, but beyond advertising the airline itself, they usually don't go super hard with the theming. After all, an airplane needs to be able to fly first and foremost; any decoration is secondary in importance, to say the least.
However, the airplane manufacturer Airbus had a little fun when designing a new freight airplane a few years back, drawing inspiration from the depths of the ocean. The Airbus BelugaXL has a design that reflects its marine mammalian name, and might just be one of the cutest planes to ever take to the skies.
This baby beluga doesn't swim in the deep blue sea- it flies tens of thousands of feet above the earth! According to @thepointsguy, this surprisingly adorable aircraft is actually two times larger than the blue whale, the largest mammal on earth. The massive aircraft, shaped similarly to a whale's head, doesn't have the same streamlined, bullet-shaped appearance of most large jets, but there's a reason for its unique design.
The Airbus BelugaXL is designed to transport large airplane parts, primarily jet wings, to Airbus manufacturing facilities across Europe. These airplane parts are far too large for most normal cargo airplanes to carry, which is where the BelugaXL's unique design comes in. Its massive fuselage, several times the size of a passenger jet's fuselage, can carry up to two Airbus wings at a time with a maximum payload of 51 tons. Most BelugaXL flights are pretty short; the aircraft is primarily designed to pull heavy hauls, not fly long hauls!
As for the adorable face... well, if you're going to make an aircraft shaped like a beluga whale, why not lean into it? The previous model in the series, the Airbus BelugaST, had a similar shape but lacked the cuter details. Luckily, Airbus improved on the design, and the Beluga XLs come bearing big blue eyes and a big, wide grin, smiling down on observers below as they haul freight across the European continent.
Seeing the Adorable BelugaXL in Flight
Unsurprisingly, aviation enthusiasts and marine mammal lovers get a kick out of these cute, rare planes, and want to catch them in flight. According to Simple Flying, the four most common destinations the Airbus BelugaXLs fly to are Toulouse, France; Hamburg, Germany; Chester, England (near the north border of Wales), and Nantes Atlantique Airport in Bouguenais, France,
If you want to get a little more in-depth with your planespotting plans, though, Simple Flying has you covered yet again with tracking information for the BelugaXLs. They provide the registration numbers for the six BelugaXLs currently in service, so you can look them up on a public tracking website like FlightRadar24.com. figure out where they travel to, and know exactly where to hang out to catch these big belugas flying overhead at just the right time! "Whale watching" has never been so high-tech.
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