Originally Posted by
dnajockey
When I saw the production a couple of years ago the quote was seven days for final assembly once all the parts had got to Toulouse.
You need to include the production time for the wings etc as well.
Here is what I got from a site which seems to be accurate:
The process for production in Toulouse is as follows:
The large pieces are brought in by a 3 day convoy. Wings,forward, center, rear and horizontal stabilizer. They are built in Spain, England, Germany and France. The tail and tail cone are brought in by the Beluga cargo planes.
The pieces arrive in Toulouse, France and are assembeled in the body join tool. After receiving their landing gear, they are rolled outside and pressure tested. They then are put into the FAL (Final Assembly Line) This holds six planes being built at a time. Here they receive the rest of their pieces, and engines. When they are complete, they are rolled out to the flight line. Here they go through a number of tests, the engines are started, they perform taxi tests and a rejected take off test. After this, the planes are flown to Hamburg Germany, XFW, for outfitting of the interiors and painting.
After outfitting and painting, they are rolled back outside for flight tests, then are delivered to the customers.
On the production list, the convoy is shown as the sequential number and year. Like the first convoy of 2009 was MSN050.
Why some planes are built faster than others, is something that is discussed a lot, but only Airbus and their customers know the real answers.
I have seen many A380s standing here for a couple of weeks at least so 7 days... I don't think so.
