Itinéraire à Grand Gabarit

The Itinéraire à Grand Gabarit is a water and road route that has been created in order to allow the transport of the outsize structural sections of the Airbus A380 airliner from their point of manufacture to Toulouse for final assembly.

Specially constructed ships, barges and road vehicles carry the aircraft parts on the route,[1] as traditional transportation methods proved unfeasible.

[4] The front and rear sections of the fuselage are loaded aboard one of the fleet in Hamburg in northern Germany, after which the ship travels to Mostyn in the United Kingdom.

The wings, which are manufactured at Filton in Bristol and Broughton in North Wales, are transported by barge on the River Dee to Mostyn docks, where the ship adds them to its cargo.

[6] The ship then proceeds to Cádiz in southern Spain, where it picks up the belly and tail sections manufactured by Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA, and delivers them to Pauillac.

Geographical logistics sequence for the A380, with final assembly in Toulouse
The Ville de Bordeaux at the Pauillac transfer dock; the barge Breuil can be seen to the left
Road convoy in an intermediate layover point outside L'Isle-Jourdain