Why can’t we make this JetBlue Airbus A320 a bit wider? Photo: David Parker Brown | AirlineReporter.com
I recently saw a comment on an older AirlineReporter.com post; it referenced a bad experience with a seat being too small. The person posed the following: “If planes were just one foot wider, seats could be as wide as first class. Would that kill Boeing or Airbus?”
I have seen this question come up quite a bit. Sure, for some of you, the answer to this might be pretty obvious. However, I don’t think that the majority of passengers really understand why this seemingly-simple change of adding more room to a plane is not simple at all. And in the end, it is not what passengers really want anyhow.
One nice aspect of Airbus being a “young” aircraft manufacture is that there are representatives of each aircraft family still flying in and out of airports today, like Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). SpeedbirdHD does a great job in catching a representative from each category of Airbus aircraft from the A300 to the A380.
British Airways Airbus A380 at the Paris Air Show. Image from Jason Rabinowitz / Airchive.com.
Even though the business phase of the Paris Air Show wound down on Thursday, orders and announcements continued at a rapid pace. Airbus and Boeing had a great PAS13 ’“ Airbus had 466 orders and commitments for commercial aircraft and Boeing had 442 total. Here’s some of what happened since our last update:
Ryanair converted previous commitments into a huge order for 175 Boeing 737-800s, adding to the 303 -800s that Ryanair flies. As well, they might be placing an order for the 737 MAX by year-end. Ryanair CEO Ryan O’Leary said that ’œit wouldn’t be worth doing’ if the order wasn’t for at least 200 aircraft.
Boeing announced that the 737 MAX’s Entry into Service (EIS) will be the 3rd quarter of 2017, about 6 months earlier than previously expected. Among other details released about the 737 MAX, the flight deck will have 4 large ’œlandscape’ displays, and the nose will be 8 inches higher to accommodate the larger fan diameter of it’s advanced LEAP-1B engines.
Leasing and finance company, CIT Aerospace, ordered 30 737 MAX 8s.
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.’
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.
