Catching a Beluga XL 2 Landing at Airbus Finkenwerder, Hamburg

The heat at the moment across Europe is unbearable but luckily for me the Airbus viewing platform at the XFW runway is only a 10 minute bike away. So despite the oppressive heat, I jumped on my bike and managed to catch this landing of a Beluga Xl, the number 2. 

So far I have only seen Belugas 2, 4 and 6, so I still have three more to go to complete the collection. It was a beautiful blue sky day, not too many people up at the platform, and one of the nice things I find are the birds between landings. I've seen Skylarks, Western Yellow Wagtail and Song Thrush. 

What always surprises me is how 'slow' the Belugas seem to be going. I find them far more majestic than smaller planes, and whilst yes the engines are loud, the A337 Belugas are so ginormous that you would expect them to be going incredibly fast to need to get enough thrust to fly. But in person, they don't look like they are going faster than a large lorry. Potentially this is also because of the distance between the runway and the plane.

Some fun facts I've learnt about Beluga XLs:

1. As mentioned there are only 6 of them in operation.
2.  They are cargo planes mainly transporting plane parts between the Airbus bases.
3.  The cargo hold is 7 metres wide and 8 metres tall. It can fit 2x A350 XWB wings inside them.
4. They cost upwards of 183 million euros.
5. It has a range of 4000km and a payload of 51 tonnes. (The equivalent of nine elephants.)

Once the planes have landed they come back in a loop past the platform, which feels like a kind of salute on their way back to their hanger. You can see it coming past in the video below:

I intend to capture many more Belugas since they are so rare elsewhere and so common here. Plus their faces are very sweet, I fully support anthropomorphising machines in future.