Hamburg, the headquarters of Airbus in Germany, employs some 15,000 people and plays a decisive role in the development and engineering of all Airbus aircraft. Final assembly takes place here for the A320 Family’s four members: the A318, A319, A320 and A321.
Hamburg is the site where A320 Family aircraft and the A380 are fitted with their cabin interiors, and painted for final delivery. Hamburg also is home to Airbus’ A380 major component assembly hall, which houses the structural assembly and the fitting-with equipment of the forward and complete rear fuselage sections for this new-generation aircraft. In addition, final acceptance and delivery of A380s for customers in Europe and the Middle East takes place in Hamburg.
This Airbus facility’s years of manufacturing experience enhance fuselage structural assembly and systems installation. It produces complete fuselage sections for the A380, which are shipped to France on a specially-built roll-on, roll-off ferry. Other key activities in Hamburg include a large spares centre – which holds some 120,000 proprietary parts for customers from around the world, and A320 Family maintenance training facilities which accommodate hundreds of airline trainees every year.
Hamburg also plays a key role in the A330 and A350 XWB programmes, for which it manufactures and equips the forward and rear fuselage sections. In the engineering domain, Airbus’ key competences in Hamburg focus on the development of fuselage structures and the design of aircraft cabins.
More than 3,000 persons are employed at Bremen, the second largest Airbus site in Germany. It is responsible for the design and manufacture of high-lift systems for the wings of Airbus aircraft. The entire process chain for the high-lift elements is established here, including the project office, technology engineering, flight physics, system engineering, structure development, verification tests, structural assembly, wing equipping and ultimate delivery to the final assembly line. In addition, Bremen manufactures sheet metal parts like clips and thrust crests for all Airbus aircraft.
Airbus A380's body
The wings of the A330 and the A350 XWB aircraft are delivered to Bremen from the Airbus plant in Broughton, UK. Here, they are fully equipped with all relevant systems, then delivered to the A330 and the A350 XWB Final Assembly Lines in Toulouse, France. For the A400M, Bremen develops and manufactures the integrated fuselage assembly, including cargo loading system. After this activity, the fully-equipped fuselage is flown to the Final Assembly Line in Seville, Spain.
The vertical tail planes for all Airbus aircraft are produced at Stade – one of the world's leading centres in the use of carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP), the weight-saving composite material which Airbus has increasingly incorporated into its aircraft, including the vertical tail plane. Stade employs approximately 1,800 people, and also produces other components from CFRP, such as flaps for single-aisle A320 aircraft, and spoilers for the widebody A330 and A340. The pressure bulkheads for the A330, A340 and A380 are also part of Stade’s production responsibilities.
A350 XWB components produced at Stade include this new-generation widebody aircraft’s upper wing shell – which represents the largest integrated carbon fibre component ever made by Airbus – along with its vertical tail plane and CFRP fuselage shells. Approximately 500 people will build A350 XWB components at the Stade facility when production reaches full capacity.
The Airbus site at Buxtehude has a workforce of some 350 employees. All the electronic communications and cabin management systems needed by both crew and passengers are designed and produced at this site. These include the cabin intercommunication data system used to control cabin functions, and the passenger service units for passenger seating system controls.
KID-SYSTEME GmbH – an Airbus subsidiary based at Buxtehude that supplies cabin intercom and data systems technology – creates systems for in-seat power supply and cabin connectivity. The KID-SYSTEME facility concentrates on conception and production of the internationally-certified SKYpower power supply system – which is directly integrated into the passenger seat and generates the power needed to operate laptops and personal electronic devices aboard aircraft. KID-SYSTEME GmbH has also developed and integrated the A380’s entire lighting system.