Before it can fly, it has to walk

This will be my last post for a while. I'm at Newark International, boarding SQ21 (an A340, I think) for Singapore in a little while, and will be in the air for 18 hours -- presumably away from Internet access. As my connecting flight from Pittsburgh descended into Newark a little while ago, I looked down at all the rows of gleaming white wings lined up along the concourses and was reminded of a conversation I had today with John Riches, a friend of mine at Alcoa's Davenport Works in Davenport, Iowa, USA.

The plant where John works as communications officer rolls the A380's mighty wing plates, the biggest, longest aluminum wing plates ever made, anywhere. What's the most interesting thing about these plates? It's not that they're the biggest. Davenport is used to that. It's how they make the journey from Davenport to Broughton, UK, where the wings are built. "Airbus sends us a specially built trailer for the wings," John told me. "We load them on the trailer, they get trucked to a terminal in New Jersey and shipped overseas, trailer and all." The cool thing is, the trailer is so long, it has extra steering -- in the back, like a big-city hook-and-ladder firetruck. That's so that once it gets to the UK and is hitched up to a truck over there, it can negotiate the tight turns and roundabouts of European roadways. "They unload it, move it to the assembly point, then ship the empty trailer back to us for another load."

John said he'd see if he could find a couple of photos of the amazing plant where these plates are made. I'll post them here when I can. In the meantime check out the by-now famous A380 Assembly video. It's pretty amazing.