Latécoère Group: French tier1´s diversified participation in the A350 XWB

Latécoère, the French tier 1 which employs 4,175 people in 9 countries, is involved in the A350 XWB Program in 3 fields:

• Aerostructures (59% of total revenue): Nose Fairing.

 

As a supplier of Aerolia, the Nose fairing is a metallic (aluminium) assembly manufactured at Gimont plant, 50km from Toulouse. There is a plant with 20 years of background (last 20/Dec/2012 was celebrated the anniversary of the facility) where there are 180 people working in manufacturing and assembly of fuselage sections for Boeing, Dassault and Airbus.  

Nose fairing assembly at Gimont

• Interconnexion systems (27% of total revenue): LATelec is the company within the group who manages the manufacturing of onboard wiring, electrical harnesses and avionics bays.

Fuselage final assy line by LATecis

 

Electrical harnesses for wings - each A350 XWB wing assembly includes 40 electrical harnesses that means more than 3,000 electrical connexions, with 21 km of wiring- is the main workpackage of LATelec. Many functional tests and design activities has been achieved by development teams that were split among three sites: Toulouse in France, Filton in England and Bremen in Germany. Assembly and testing were carried out at LATelec’s factory in Liposthey, in the Bordeaux region.

LATelec also manufactures onboard avionic racks as well as cockpit control panels (CCP) for the  A350 XWB.

• Engineering and Services (14% of total revenue): LATecis is the company with capabilities of design, stress analysis and definition of industrial products that for A350 XWB has designed, manufactured and set-up important tooling and assembly lines: the fuselage final assembly line in the FAL-Toulouse, the assembly line of the wingbox, the automatic engine assembly line and the Iron Bird assembly line.

wingbox assembly line by LATecis

 automatic engine assembly line by LATecis

 

Iron bird assembly line by LATecis