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The 18^th Section visit to Airbus at Toulouse 4^th December 2007

By Graham Armitt

After the last trip was only in July this year, I expected this one to be fairly quiet, hopefully getting at least 18 members to come along. In fact it proved to be biggest in terms of numbers of members wanting a place, 33 in total. As Airbus can only accommodate 18 per visit, I had to leave 15 behind. 

Apart for 5 members, we all travelled down to Toulouse on the first British Airways flight out of Gatwick and all got on. 2 of the 5 travelled down the previous evening, not wanting to get up at the crack of dawn and the other 3 travelled on Easy Jet. 

As usual, a number of us decided to meet at Hatton Cross and pile into one or two cars and drive to Gatwick that morning. As the BA flights out and back looked ok for standby’s we did not have to arrange a taxi as we did in July as no back up tickets were necessary to come back over Paris. 

The flight left on time and arrived TLS early but not in the usual warm sunshine.  I think I have been on all the previously arranged trips to Toulouse but have never encountered such persistent rain. The rain continued for most of our trip and sometimes was quite heavy. 

The tour was the usual comprehensive type, including all the production facilities including the A380. We had been round once before but the production line was still being built, so it was to see the finished line with a number of complete A380 airframes. 

As we need a separate visitor’s pass for the A380 production area, it was well into the afternoon before we had walked through the first of 2 A380 production lines and I was then told we only had the coach for another 15 minutes, before it was needed for another party. Therefore, we didn’t have time for the 2^nd A380 line as we had to head back to the terminal.  

Even with the 2^nd A380 line not happening, we saw approximately 85 Airbus & ATR frames, so another successful visit. 

As expected everyone standing by for the last BA flight back to Gatwick got on and even though it left 15 minutes late we got into Gatwick on time.