San Francisco Frontiers - Beached whales: Airbus grounds its massive Beluga cargo flights

All flights operated by the Airbus Beluga Transport (AiBT) fleet have been suspended with immediate effect, a spokeswoman told AFP after a report in business daily Les Echos.

The Beluga -- billed by Airbus as the world's biggest cargo plane in terms of volume transported -- looks something like a whale, with a rounded fuselage mounted on an Airbus A300-600 base.

Big enough to carry two full-size helicopters of the Super-Puma type, the mega-transporter was brought into service in 1995 specifically to ferry large sections of aircraft between different Airbus manufacturing sites.

Airbus began replacing its first generation of planes -- Beluga STs -- with the even larger Beluga XLs in 2019. The latter continue to ferry parts between Airbus sites.

The consortium repurposed the previous jets by launching AiBT in 2022, with four planes offering to transport oversize cargo for customers in the aerospace, energy, maritime, military, space and humanitarian aid sectors.

Airbus said there had been a notable shift in some areas towards using maritime transport, even though the demand for global air freight remained high.

But it said that was not the main reason for shutting down the business.

"AiBT is not ending operations because of changes in the air freight market," the spokeswoman said. "The main challenge was the significant operational difficulties."

C.Williams--SFF