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Is there a specific name for the protruding section of fuselage beneath the wings? Im talking about the area where the landing gear bay often is. In the photo it's where the red Emirates logo is painted.

enter image description here source

Some older airliners don't have them, such as the A300

enter image description here source

TomMcW
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    I think most people call it "the belly" though there may be a technical term for it. I would call it the "belly center section" put that's just pilot talk and may not mean anything to anyone who builds or maintains these planes. – acpilot Jul 05 '17 at 04:05
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    @acpilot I figure it's got some kind of fancy French name, like "renflement," or "gonflement." I would choose "ventre de bière" myself. – TomMcW Jul 05 '17 at 04:20
  • I wonder the same. Really pronounced on many business jets like the Citation X. – Pugz Jul 05 '17 at 06:14
  • Ventre de bière it is! Now, we need to Americanize it so...it's a "venter dee beerie." – acpilot Jul 05 '17 at 15:48

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The outer covers at-least, are called wing to body fairings in this Airbus document- 'Airbus Future Composite Wing'.

A340 Assemlby

Wing to body fairings; image from Airbus Future Composite Wing

Elsewhere, the covers are called belly fairings by the manufacturers themselves, and also in the US patent US 20060065784 A1- Aircraft provided with a belly fairing, and corresponding belly fairing.

Anyway, the fairings enclose the center wing box and the main landing gear wheel well.

aeroalias
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In the trade this part is generally called "belly fairing" because that term is shorter and more specific than older names like "center wing fairing" or "wing-to-body fairing" or "wing/fuselage fairing". See this AV article about an AD for the A380, for example.

Belly fairing expresses better that the fairing is mostly below the wing-fuselage intersection. The older expressions were already used for the usual fillets between wing and fuselage which became standard in the 1930s. When it was learned that in transsonic flow the clever shaping of displacement bodies can reduce drag, the fairing grew over time. An important benefit is the added space for storing the main gear.

The usual French name for it is "carénage ventral", which is a pretty straightforward translation of the English expression.

Peter Kämpf
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  • "carénage ventral" in my Frenglish becomes "belly carnage" which isn't really what we're after, is it? :D – FreeMan Jul 05 '17 at 20:44
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Finally is a fairing of the junction between both components, fuselage and wing. The intention of this fairing is to reduce the drag created by the junctions. Essentially this fairing is located in the "belly" of the airplane.

So, the usual name is "belly fairing".

Trebia Project.
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