The coolest planes in all of France have flown in formation together, and we couldn't be happier about it.
On Friday May 30, fighter jets with the country's top (only?) aerobatic flying team took to the skies over Toulouse alongside the Airbus Beluga, the funky cargo plane we love more every time we see it.
Airbus developed the Beluga, known by the more serious among us as the A300-600ST Super Transporter, in the 1990s to carry wings and fuselages between assembly plants. Derived from the A300, the plane looks more like its namesake cetacean or the alien supervillain Megamind than something that can get off the ground, let alone keep up with eight of the blue, white, and red Alphajets of the Armée de l'Air.
The Beluga is 56 feet tall with a cavernous cargo hold. The cargo deck covers 1,400 square meters, more than an Olympic-size swimming pool. The plane's max takeoff weight is more than 340,000 pounds, and its two--just two--General Electric turbofan engines can propel it to 625 mph. There are just five of these behemoths in the world, and they're all used by Airbus to shuttle parts or for the occasional charter flight like, say, carrying Eugene Delacroix's enormous painting Liberty Leading the People from Paris to Tokyo in 1999.
The Dassault/Dornier Alphajet is used by French pilots in training, as well as by the Patrouille de France, the French Air Force's demonstration flying team. It's just 14 feet tall and its max takeoff weight is under 16,000 pounds.
Airbus called the joint appearance, part of the 2014 Airexpo air show in southwest France, a "one-in-a-lifetime flight." That's a real bummer, because we'd love to see these jets team up again.
