The first Airbus A350 lifts off. Photo from Airbus.
At almost exactly 10:00am local time in Toulouse, France, the first Airbus A350 successfully took off with many on lookers locally and over 20,000 viewers on Airbus’ live feed. Six crew on board took the A350-900 XWB for a four hour test flight which will be the first of many to get to the 2,500 flight hours required for certification. The first aircraft, MS001, will be joined by four other test aircraft to get there.
’œI congratulate the whole A350 XWB development team for having completed the first flight preparation in a record time,” Airbus President and CEO Fabrice Bregier said. “I also wish to thank the first flight crew today for taking this aircraft where it wants to be ’“ in the sky. I would also like to extend my gratitude to all our teams in the design offices, at programme and manufacturing level, the ground crews as well as our colleagues in airlines and suppliers and many others who helped define this all-new aircraft. The A350 XWB which has flown today, integrating the latest available technologies, is now entering the final stage of its development. And it is ready. Ready to head towards certification and entry-into-service in the second half of next year.’
If you were not one of the hardcore #AvGeeks who were up during the first flight, you can watch the replace of the live stream on Airbus’ website. Can also see the landing of the A350 via MrAxe26 on YouTube.
This post will be updated as new Airbus A350 events unfold. All times will be in PST, nine hours behind local time in Toulouse, France.
6/14 7:45am – We have posted the “A350 first flight” story with photos.
6/14 7:00am – Due to server issues, we were not able to update after 10:20pm, our apologies.
6/14 01:05am – Almost right on time, the first Airbus A350 took flight.
6/13 10:20pm – We made the mistake of time zones. Toulouse is in CEST, but Airbus was reporting times in UTC. Our apologizes. The live stream should start at midnight PST, the first flight is set to happen at 1am 6/14 PST. Thanks for Chris with Airchive.com (who is in Paris) for confirming.
6/13 8:00pm – Although the Airbus press release said live feed will start at 10pm PST, the live feed code above shows midnight. Trying to clarify, but we might just have to wait and see when it starts.
STORY FROM 8:50AM June 13th:
The first Airbus A350-900 XWB is scheduled to have its first flight at 10:00am UTC tomorrow, Friday June 14th. For those of you in the US, that means either an early morning (4am EST) or a late night (1am PST). But worth it? Heck yes. When is the next time we will all be able to share in the first flight of a major new aircraft? It will be quite sometime [after the Cseries].
The first flight will take place in Toulouse, France and comes just before the Paris Air Show that is scheduled for next week. Airbus plans to deliver the first A350-900 XWB in the second half of 2014 to its launch customer Qatar Airways.
Starting at 7:00am UTC (aka 1am EST and 10pm PST) Airbus will provide a live feed via their website www.A350XWBfirstflight.com. Be sure to also follow along via AirlineReporter.com, our Twitter (hashtage is #A350FF) and our Facebook page.
Want a run-down of the Airbus A350 and what it means? Check out Jack Harty’s A350 story on Airchive.com for all the background.
PREVIOUS AIRBUS A350 XWB GOODIES:
Icelandair Boeing 757 in Seattle (SEA).
On May 16th, 2013, Icelandair flew its inaugural flight from Anchorage (ANC) to Keflavàk (KEF) in Iceland. I was not able to swing a trip up to ANC for the festivities, but I was able to take their flight from Seattle (SEA) and join in with the celebration in Iceland. This is my review of flying Icelandair to Iceland and back. Notice: Icelandair covered my trip to/from Iceland. All opinions are my own.
I have flown internationally before and the standard international travel excitement led me to show up way too early. I arrived at noon and still had thirty minutes until Icelandair’s ticket counter opened. Since the airline doesn’t fly every few minutes, they don’t staff their counters at all hours of the day and night — which makes sense. I tend to forget this since I mainly travel with larger carriers and have little problem getting to the airport super early.
Promptly at noon, an Icelandair ticket agent had the place running, checked in my bag, and had me on my way. They recently adopted online check-in and ticketing and it worked perfectly. No paper, no fuss.
Air New Zealand’s new white fern livery seen on the 787-9 Dreamliner. Image from Air New Zealand.
What is better than one new awesome livery? Two of course. Yesterday, Air New Zealand revealed not just one new livery, but two. The livery is much more than just a fancy new design; It is also the start of a $20million marketing partnership between the airline and Tourism New Zealand.
“We are delighted to reveal our new aircraft livery which would not have been possible without the support of Tourism New Zealand and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise,” Air New Zealand Chief Executive Officer Christopher Luxon stated in a press release. “The new-look livery is distinctive and iconic and we believe will inspire a sense of pride in New Zealanders.”
The new livery features the official New Zealand Fern Mark and is a bit reminiscent of the highly popular All Blacks livery design previously seen on the 777. This change also celebrates black becoming the airline’s new brand color.
In the coming year, Air New Zealand will introduce the new design first on the 787-9 Dreamliner and then to the rest of the fleet. According to the airline the, “majority of the fleet will sport the white livery, with the black version reserved for a few select planes.” My bet is the first 787-9 will have the black livery.
In recent history, the airline has seemed a little lost in where they wanted their livery to go. With the introduction of the 777-300ER, the “Pacific Wave,” was removed and then more recently, it was announced the airline would go with a black tail. It might have taken them a while to arrive to this new livery, but holy smokes — what a looker, times two.
Air Koryo Tupolev TU-134 (P-814) with crew.
Read Bernie’s other Russian Metal reports of the Ilyushin IL-62 and the Ilyushin IL-18.
Andrei Tupolev was an engineering hero. When he saw that the Tu-124’s wingroot engines were sub-optimal for unpaved airfields and difficult to maintain, he decided to change it and create what would be the most prolific regional jet of the Warsaw Pact: the Tupolev Tu-134.
With most of the Russian airlines having replaced their Tu-134 with Canadair Regional Jets, once again- Air Koryo (airline code: JS) is your best bet to catch a ride. Flights within Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) are always challenging to arrange. Not only do you need permission from the landing and departing airport, you also need permission to overfly every province and air defense district.
It turns out that ’œflying on a vintage Russian aircraft’ is not enough to satisfy the DPRK bureaucracy. As such, the tour guides always needed a more conventional ’œtouristy’ reason for the flights to be conducted for approvals to be granted quickly. On top of that, the guides had to be granted permission to leave Pyongyang months in advance.
