Upper Deck Catering Vehicle for Airbus A380 - Catering Vehicle for Airports – Airport Catering Vehicle

After only one year of planning -, development and production time the FFG Fahrzeugwerkstätten Falkenried GmbH, a subsidiary company of the mass transit operator of the City of Hamburg, presented on its workshop on 1st of July 2005 the first Catering Lifting Vehicle for the AIRBUS A380.

As the largest passenger air plane of the world the A380 does not only place new requirements against the airlines and airports, also the Catering societies and their Catering Lifting Vehicles themselves must face the challenges.

For the supply of the galley the delivery height of this new type of aircraft reaches up to max. 8.40 meters - at conventional air planes this height lies at max. 6.1 meters. As the supplying door of the A380 in addition, differently than with past air planes lies over the wing base, there are high safety requirements for the docking procedure to the air plane. During the docking procedure the Catering Lifting Vehicle has to keep a min. distance of 600 mm off the engine housing and a distance of up to 4.5 meters to the supplying door.

With the docking procedure newly developed again from FFG Hamburg and a special electronic control all safety requirements for the A380 are optimally fulfilled. So the lifting structure particularly developed by FFG, starting from a vertical height of 7 meters, can override by procedures in longitudinal direction the demanded distance to the air plane door and swivel additionally crosswise.

The weight of the vehicle being over eleven meters long amounts to 26 tons, the additional load may be up to 4,5 tons or equivalent to 53 Trolleys.

In July 2005 FFG Hamburg could present the new A380 Catering Lifting Vehicle at Airbus in Toulouse in the presence of representatives of all considerable airlines and Catering societies operating world-wide at a Mock UP. This presentation ran just as successfully as the docking procedure on the occasion of the first landing of a A380 on the airport Frankfurt on 29th of October 2005.