The Airbus A330neo is fully assembled and leaves the workshop in Toulouse, France, before taking off into the sky.
Airbus shared a two-minute video documenting the assembly of its A330-900 passenger jet from transporting components to final assembly line and then taking off. At the beginning of the video, parts are unloaded from the Airbus Beluga 3, one of Airbus' five whale-shaped transports.
The aircraft assembled in the video is the first Air Mauritius A330-900, delivered in Toulouse, France on April 18. The A330-900 is the wide-body model in the A330neo family. The handover ceremony makes Air Mauritius the first airline to operate the A330neo in the Southern Hemisphere.
The plane, named Aapravasi Ghat after a Mauritius World Heritage Site, includes a two-class cabin with 28 business seats and 260 economy seats. The aircraft is powered by Rolls-Royce's latest generation Trent 7000 engines and Sharklet curved wings designed to reduce fuel consumption.
The A330-900 will fly on routes linking Mauritius with Europe, India and Southeast Asia and regional destinations such as Johannesburg, Antananarivo and Reunion Island. The A330 has attracted more than 1,700 orders from 120 customers.