Staff Reporter: In Kolkata, I met ‘Dolphin.’ There was a rush to take pictures with varied gestures after leaving it behind. The fish, not so much. After a thunderstorm, the six-story plane landed at Kolkata airport on Saturday night. Whose visage resembles that of a dolphin. The Airbus transports two helicopters in a cabin four times the size of a regular plane. It flew to Pattaya, Thailand, on Sunday. With this in mind, the airport authorities, airlines, airline executives, employees, and passengers have all experienced a backlash. In 1999, the plane made its inaugural landing in Kolkata. Dolphin was spotted in the city for the second time in 23 years.
The Airbus A00 B4-606ST Super Transporter is a modified variant of the Airbus A300-600 wide-body aircraft that is used to assemble planes or transport heavy cargo. Because it resembled a beluga dolphin, the plane, dubbed “Beluga,” landed in Kolkata at 8:52 p.m. on Saturday. For the next 24 hours, the address was the airport’s parking bay number 18. On May 17, one of the world’s only five Beluga aircraft took off from Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, France. Marseilles, Athens, Cairo, Abu Dhabi, and Ahmedabad were among the stops on the jet. Arrive at Kolkata on Saturday from Ahmedabad. On Sunday, the next stop will be Pattaya, Thailand.
Read More: Know-How to hide your WhatsApp chat? Check steps here
The ‘Dolphin,’ according to a Kolkata airport official, has been the airport’s major attraction since Saturday night. The airport workers took selfies while leaving the jet behind. “Every time I see the face of a plane that looks like a dolphin, a smile arises on my face,” the official remarked. The Beluga airplane stands about the same height as a six-story building. The wings have only been shown to give a sense of scale. The cargo hold is 124 feet long, 23 feet broad, and 23 feet high on the inside.
The plane landed in Kolkata for the second time, according to airport officials. In 1999, the jet landed in Kolkata with a massive sketch of Eugene Delacoa’s Liberty Leading the People. Since 184, the artwork has been on exhibit at the Louvre in Paris. Its dimensions were so vast that it couldn’t fit into a Boeing B747 plane. It was then shipped from Paris to Tokyo via Tehran and Calcutta, with special accommodations made at Beluga.
The Beluga Airbus aircraft was captured and tweeted by Kolkata Airport on Saturday. The airport authorities’ joy is obvious as soon as you read the message posted on the tweet. Excited travelers also took to social media to share their joy.
