Airbus A300-600ST Beluga (BelugaST)

Updated: October 2026 – Long before the grinning BelugaXL became an Instagram star, there was already a whale in the sky over Europe: the Airbus A300-600ST Beluga, now mostly called the BelugaST. From 1996, five examples carried wings, fuselage sections and tail parts back and forth between the Airbus plants; without them, mass production of the A320 and A330 would hardly have been conceivable. By now the BelugaST is a phase-out model. This page shows you the technology and history, its routes and how to tell it from the BelugaXL.

What is the Airbus A300-600ST Beluga?

The A300-600ST is a special freighter for oversized components. The abbreviation ST stands for “Super Transporter”; it got the nickname Beluga because of its shape: above the fuselage of an A300-600 sits a huge, round cargo hold, with the cockpit low beneath it. The result really does recall a beluga whale.

The background is the special division of labor at Airbus. Since the beginning, large assemblies have been manufactured in different countries: wings in the United Kingdom, fuselage sections in Germany and France, tail parts in Spain. The aircraft are put together on the final assembly lines, for the A300 and later the A330 mainly in Toulouse. Because many parts are too big for road or rail, Airbus flies them itself.

The BelugaST’s cargo hold is 37.7 meters long, and depending on the source the volume is around 1,400 to 1,500 cubic meters. According to Airbus, loads up to about 7.1 meters wide and 6.7 meters high fit inside – Airbus advertises it as offering the largest internal cross-section of any transport aircraft. The payload is around 47 tonnes. Loading is from the front: the upper fuselage nose above the cockpit swings up as a large door, and the components are pushed in.

From Super Guppy to Beluga: how it came about

Before the Beluga, Airbus transported its components with the Super Guppy Turbine, a conversion based on the Boeing Stratocruiser family. As production numbers rose, the old Guppys became too small, too slow and too expensive. For a successor, Aérospatiale and the German DASA founded the joint venture SATIC (Super Airbus Transport International Company), based in Toulouse, in August 1991.

The work was spread across half of Europe: CASA built the upper fuselage shell, Dornier contributed the hydraulics, and Sogerma took over final assembly. Construction of the first aircraft began in September 1992, and it took off for its first flight on September 13, 1994. After extensive test flights, certification followed in October 1995, and in January 1996 the first BelugaST entered service. After that, roughly one more aircraft was added each year, and the fifth and last aircraft entered service in December 2000. Airbus retired the last Super Guppys in October 1997.

The leap was huge: compared with the Super Guppy, the payload almost doubled, and because the cockpit sits under the cargo hold, the whole fuselage no longer has to be opened for loading. That made handling much faster and transport more economical.

Technology: an A300-600 with a hump

Under the hump lies a lot of familiar A300 technology. Wings, landing gear and lower fuselage structure come from the A300-600, and the power comes from two General Electric CF6-80C2A8. New were the add-on cargo hold, the lowered cockpit, an enlarged vertical stabilizer and additional vertical fins at the ends of the horizontal stabilizer, which ensure stability despite the large side area.

Only the cockpit is pressurized. The cargo hold is neither pressurized nor heated, and nobody can reach the cargo in flight. That is no problem for wings and fuselage parts, but it limits the Beluga to robust loads.

The range is designed for Europe: depending on load, reference works give around 1,700 to just under 2,800 kilometers with heavy cargo and around 4,600 kilometers with about half a load. The top speed is Mach 0.7. For longer charter flights – to Japan or Australia, for example – several fuel stops were therefore necessary. A side note: in 2011, Pau airport in southern France became the first in Europe to use satellite-based EGNOS approaches, and for Beluga landings of all things.

Feature	Value
Length / wingspan / height	56.15 m / 44.84 m / 17.24 m
Max. takeoff weight	155 t
Payload	around 47 t
Cargo hold	37.7 m long, around 1,400–1,500 m³
Engines	2 × GE CF6-80C2A8
Range	depending on load around 1,700 to 4,600 km

The routes: Finkenwerder, Toulouse, Broughton

The BelugaST’s everyday life was shuttle traffic in the Airbus network. The main axes:

• Broughton (Hawarden Airport, Wales): this is where Airbus has built the wings of most of its airliners for decades. The Beluga picked them up and brought them to the final assembly lines.
• Hamburg-Finkenwerder: factory airfield on the Elbe, fuselage sections and equipment, later final assembly of the A320 family. The factory airfield is separate from Hamburg Airport; more spots in the city are named in the Hamburg guide. Which spots there are legal is covered in the guide Spotting at Airbus Finkenwerder.
• Toulouse: home base and final assembly of the widebody jets at Toulouse-Blagnac Airport. In 2019, Toulouse got a new loading station with two bays for the Belugas. Spots around the site are collected in Plane spotting in Toulouse-Blagnac.
• Bremen: the Airbus plant right at Bremen Airport was also served regularly, according to reference works with wings from Broughton, among other things.

In addition there were further sites in France and Spain. According to reference works, besides Toulouse and Hamburg the fleet served around nine more sites. There were never public schedules – the rotations followed production.

Famous loads beyond factory traffic

Airbus used the spare capacity for special jobs early on. The best-known examples:

• 1997: a chemical tank for a merchant ship from Clermont-Ferrand to Le Havre – at the time a record for the most voluminous air cargo.
• 1999: Eugène Delacroix’s painting “Liberty Leading the People” traveled upright in the cargo hold from Paris to Tokyo.
• 2003: two NH90s and a Tiger helicopter flew from Marseille to Melbourne, with about 25 hours of flight time in total.
• ISS modules: the European laboratory Columbus and, in 2009, the Tranquility module on the way to the Kennedy Space Center.
• December 2021: a brand-new helicopter from Airbus Helicopters from Marignane to Kobe, with fuel stops in Warsaw, Novosibirsk and Seoul.
• September 2022: in Manching, Airbus tested with the Bundeswehr (German armed forces) a loading system with which a CH-53 helicopter was lifted into the Beluga without a crane.

Second career and farewell: Airbus Beluga Transport

With the start of the BelugaXL in January 2020, the phase-out began. According to German-language reference works, the first BelugaST were parked as early as 2020 and 2021, while other sources report that in early 2023 all five were transferred to a new subsidiary. As early as January 2022, Airbus had announced the new role: under the name Airbus Beluga Transport, Airbus offered oversized freight with them for external customers – engines, satellites, helicopters, industrial plants. The demand seemed to be there, because large freighters like the Antonov An-124 had become scarce, according to industry reports.

In November 2023, the new airline received its own French air operator certificate. The business did not last long: in January 2025, Airbus confirmed it was ending operations, and flights were suspended. Flight operations wound down over the second half of 2025.

On January 29, 2026, the BelugaST 5 (F-GSTF) said goodbye with a flyover of Broughton and landed there for the last time. According to reports, at that point numbers 1 and 4 were already out of service, number 2 was parked, and number 3 was still flying between plants in Germany and France. According to industry reports, the series’ service ends in 2027 at the latest. Airbus said it is looking for permanent homes for all five aircraft and prefers preservation to scrapping – museums, exhibition spaces and educational institutions are under consideration. How to catch such farewell flights in time is explained in Spotting farewell and first flights.

How to recognize the BelugaST

You do not confuse the Beluga with a normal freighter. The real question is: ST or XL? Three looks are enough.

Confirmation comes from the registration: all five BelugaST are registered in France, and the registrations begin with F-GST. How registrations are structured is explained in Understanding aircraft registrations.

Feature	BelugaST	BelugaXL
Basis	A300-600	A330-200F
ICAO type designator	A3ST	A337
Length	56.15 m	63.1 m
First flight	1994	2018
Engines	GE CF6-80C2	Rolls-Royce Trent 700
Wingtips	small fences	tall winglets
Paint scheme	without a face	whale face
Built	5	6

Distinguishing it from other large freighters

Boeing implemented a similar concept with the 747 Dreamlifter, but on a jumbo basis and with a swing tail instead of a nose door. What the Belugas achieve in a size comparison is shown by The largest aircraft in the world, and Identifying cargo aircraft offers basics on freighters. You will find the normal freighter version of the platform under A300-600F.

Spotting strategy for a phase-out model

Catching a BelugaST in flight is, as of October 2026, a matter of tracking and luck. Factory flights often show up in flight tracking services only shortly before takeoff. Set filters for the type designator A3ST and the operator code BGA of Airbus Transport International; basics in the article Flight tracking with ADS-B and in Tracking test flights and factory flights.

In Germany, Hamburg-Finkenwerder and Bremen are the most realistic places. In Bremen, the observation deck at Bremen Airport offers a good view (more in the Bremen guide), and in Finkenwerder you stand on public paths outside the factory fence. At the factory grounds, one rule always applies: barriers and no-entry rules take priority – more on that in Is plane spotting allowed?.

For the photo itself, the same applies as for the successor: the big white hump easily blows out, and slightly reduced exposure saves the contours. The three-quarter view from the front shows cockpit, hump and engines at once. You work out in advance when the light is right with the guide Planning sun position. More exotics for your list are collected in Spotting rare aircraft.

Common mix-ups and how to rule them out

Conclusion

The A300-600ST Beluga is the ancestor of all Airbus whales. For three decades it carried wings from Broughton and fuselage parts from Hamburg to final assembly, flew space station modules and art treasures on the side and made factory airfields into pilgrimage sites for spotters. Since 2020 the BelugaXL has taken over its work, and after the end of Airbus Beluga Transport the era is coming to a close. If you still want to see a flying BelugaST, you need tracking filters and patience – everyone else will find the whales more likely in a museum than in the sky.