News

SABCA delivers the 1000-th Airbus A330/340 Tailcone

Jul 2010

SABCA delivers this week to Airbus in Toulouse its 1000-th Equipped Tailcone for the Airbus A330/340 family, almost 20 years after the delivery of the first prototype in August 1990. This important milestone confirms the success of the first ever contract between SABCA and Airbus, as well as the importance of the Tailcone program for the Belgian aerospace manufacturer.

The Tailcone structure corresponds to the last 4 meter of the aircraft fuselage. Its unpressurized double-walled metallic structure holds and houses the Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) and the associated equipment like air intake, muffler, fuel and electrical systems.

The adventure started late 1988 when SABCA got its first opportunity to work directly with MBB (later to become Airbus Deutschland), the German portion of the Airbus consortium.

Under a full risk-sharing contract, SABCA successfully designed, qualified and built the first prototype structure within the imparted time and technical constraints. As production started to ramp-up, SABCA was asked by Airbus to also take the responsibility of all equipment within the structure, except the APU. Since then SABCA thus delivers the equipped Tailcone directly to the Final Assembly Line (FAL) in Toulouse.

The Tailcone production is one of the main programs at SABCA and provides work to more than 100 full-time specialists. This program also triggered the collaboration with the various entities of Airbus and represents a major step towards the development of SABCA’s civil aircraft activities, leading to several major Airbus contracts for the A340-500/600, the A380 very large airliner, the A400M military transport and more recently the future A350 XWB.

The present milestone is in no way a conclusion : the huge success of the different versions of the A330 program promises hundreds of further deliveries in the coming years.

SABCA is a leading Belgian Aerospace company since almost 90 years, employing 1000 highly trained persons. SABCA is active in civil aircraft design and manufacture (Airbus, Dassault, Gulfstream), military aircraft overhaul and upgrades (F16, Mirage F1, Alphajet, helicopters, etc…) as well as in space programs (Ariane, Vega). These activities cover structural work as well as thust vectoring systems and systems integration. SABCA has plants in Brussels and Charleroi, and a fully owned subsidiary SABCA Limburg nv, specialized in aerospace composites.

For more information, write to:

Marketing & Sales Director SABCA

Fax +32 2 729 5896 or  sales@sabca.be