Aircraft Industry: Meet The Bizarre But Useful Airbus Beluga - by Alex Davies

The Airbus Beluga Cargo Jet

Business is booming at Airbus: The European planemaker just closed a huge deal to sell $24 billion worth of A320 jets to Indonesia's Lion Air, and it's busy building the A350 XWB, the plane it created to compete with Boeing's 787 Dreamliner.

Airbus is based in Toulouse, France, but produces planes in the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, and China.

To transport the wings and fuselages of half-built planes from one factory to another, it needed a plane bigger than any standard cargo jet.  So it built the Beluga.

Developed in the 1990s and based on the A300 (the wings, engines, landing gear, and lower portion of the fuselage are the same), the Beluga has one of the biggest cargo holds in the world.

It's the best way to get the body of a jumbo jet, a fleet of helicopters, or even a priceless painting across the planet.

It's also one of the strangest looking planes in the skies today.

Read more: Meet The Bizarre But Useful Airbus Beluga - Business Insider