Learn why the Airbus A340-600 has centre landing gear, how its four-wheel body bogie spreads loads, and how it differs from earlier A340s.
The Airbus A340-600 has a centre landing gear to share its high ground and touchdown loads with the two wing-mounted main gear units. Its four centre wheels spread weight across a larger pavement area, reduce the load carried by each assembly and help keep runway and taxiway loading within design limits.
This is a structural and pavement-loading solution for a large, heavy airliner. Our guide to how aircraft landing gear carries weight and absorbs touchdown loads explains the underlying principles.
What does the A340-600 centre landing gear do?
The centre unit is a genuine load-bearing main gear, not a small stabiliser or emergency support. It is mounted beneath the fuselage on the aircraft centreline and uses a four-wheel bogie.
Together, the A340-600 has eight wheels on its two wing gear bogies, four on the centre gear and two on the nose gear: 14 wheels in total. The 12 main wheels divide the aircraft's weight and landing loads among more tyre contact patches.
The share carried by each gear is not permanently equal. It changes with aircraft weight, centre of gravity, braking, acceleration and surface conditions, but the centre gear remains part of the normal load path whenever the aircraft is on the ground.
Why not make the two wing landing gears stronger?
Stronger wing gear alone would not solve the concentration of weight on relatively few wheels. Adding the centre bogie addresses several constraints at once:
- Lower wheel loading: more wheels divide the aircraft's weight into smaller individual loads.
- Better pavement load distribution: the wider gear footprint reduces how severely the aircraft loads a particular section of runway or taxiway.
- Shared structural loads: the fuselage-mounted assembly reduces the amount that must pass through the two wing gear attachment areas.
- Practical packaging: enlarging the wing bogies would require heavier gear, larger wheel wells and additional changes inside the wing.
The trade-off is extra mass, maintenance, tyres, doors, hydraulics and retraction machinery. On an aircraft with the A340-600's design weights, Airbus judged that cost preferable to concentrating the load on two main assemblies. For the wider design context, see our explanation of what made the A340-600 distinctive.
Does the centre gear prevent an A340-600 tailstrike?
No. The centre landing gear was designed primarily to carry and distribute load; it is not a tail skid.
The A340-600's long fuselage does make rotation technique and pitch attitude particularly significant, but tailstrike avoidance depends on aircraft geometry, operating procedures and correct rotation rather than the centre bogie acting as a sacrificial support.
Do all Airbus A340 variants use the same centre gear?
No. The centre gear became larger as the A340 family grew heavier.
| A340 family | Centre gear arrangement | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| A340-200 and A340-300 | Two-wheel centre gear | Suited to their lower design weights |
| A340-500 and A340-600 | Four-wheel centre bogie | Distributes the greater loads of the larger, heavier variants |
How should the centre landing gear behave in a simulator?
A detailed A340-600 add-on should animate the centre bogie with the main landing gear and define ground-contact points for its wheels. It should visibly support the aeroplane when parked and rolling, although many simulators do not reproduce the real aircraft's exact load distribution across individual wheels.
If the centre tyres float above the runway, sink into it or slide sideways during turns, that usually indicates mismatched contact points, suspension geometry or visual animation in the add-on—not normal A340 behaviour. Simmers can inspect the arrangement using this FSX A340-600 model in Airbus colours, while remembering that visual detail does not guarantee a fully simulated load-sharing system.