38 Facts About Airbus A350

Airbus A350 is a long-range, wide-body twin-engine jet airliner developed and produced by Airbus.

Airbus A350 orders stood at 919 aircraft, of which 495 had been delivered and all were in service with 39 operators.

Airbus A350 initially rejected Boeing's claim that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner would be a serious threat to the Airbus A350 A330, stating that the 787 was just a reaction to the A330 and that no response was needed.

Airbus A350 planned to announce this version at the 2004 Farnborough Airshow, but did not proceed.

The Airbus A350 was initially planned to be a 250- to 300-seat twin-engine wide-body aircraft derived from the existing A330's design.

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Under this plan, the Airbus A350 would have modified wings and new engines while sharing the A330's fuselage cross-section.

Original A350 design was publicly criticised by two of Airbus's largest customers, International Lease Finance Corporation and GE Capital Aviation Services .

On 28 March 2006, ILFC President Steven F Udvar-Hazy urged Airbus to pursue a clean-sheet design or risk losing market share to Boeing and branded Airbus's strategy as "a Band-aid reaction to the 787", a sentiment echoed by GECAS president Henry Hubschman.

New technical details of the Airbus A350 XWB were revealed at a press conference in December 2006.

Airbus suggested Boeing's use of composite materials for the 787 fuselage was premature, and that the new A350 XWB was to feature large carbon fibre panels for the main fuselage skin.

Airbus A350 used a full mock up fuselage to develop the wiring, a different approach from the A380, on which the wiring was all done on computers.

In 2006, Airbus confirmed development of a full bleed air system on the A350, as opposed to the 787's bleedless configuration.

In June 2007, John Leahy indicated that the A350 XWB would not feature the GEnx engine, saying that Airbus wanted GE to offer a more efficient version for the airliner.

In May 2009, GE said that if it were to reach a deal with Airbus to offer the current 787-optimised GEnx for the A350, it would only power the -800 and -900 variants.

In 2008, Airbus A350 planned to start cabin furnishing early in parallel with final assembly to cut production time in half.

The A350 XWB production programme sees extensive international collaboration and investments in new facilities: Airbus constructed 10 new factories in Western Europe and the US, with extensions carried out on three further sites.

The forward fuselage of the first Airbus A350 was delivered to the final assembly plant in Toulouse on 29 December 2011.

Airbus A350 announced plans to increase its production rate from 10 monthly in 2018 to 13 monthly from 2019 and six A330 are produced monthly.

In 2019, Airbus delivered 112 A350s at a rate of 10 per month, and were going to keep the rate around nine to 10 per month, to reflect softer demand for widebodies, as the backlog reached 579 - or 5.

Airbus A350 confirmed that the flight test programme would last 12 months and use five test aircraft.

Airbus A350 received type certification from the European Aviation Safety Agency on 30 September 2014.

Later that month Airbus received regulatory approval for a Common Type Rating for pilot training between the A350 XWB and A330.

In July 2012, Airbus A350 delayed the -900's introduction by three months to the second half of 2014.

Airbus A350 planned to decrease structural weight in the -800 as development continued, which should have been around airframe 20.

In January 2017, Aeroflot and Airbus A350 announced the cancellation of its -800 order, leaving Asiana Airlines as the only customer for the variant.

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Airbus A350 has explored the possibility of a further stretch offering 45 more seats.

The 2019 earnings report presented by Airbus stated that the A350 programme had broken even in 2019.

The 10-abreast seating on the Airbus A350 is similar to a 9-abreast configuration on the A330, with a seat width of 41.

Airbus A350 devised a three-pronged main undercarriage design philosophy encompassing both four- and six-wheel bogies to stay within pavement loading limits.

In light of the 787 Dreamliner battery problems, in February 2013 Airbus A350 decided to revert from lithium-ion to the proven nickel-cadmium technology although the flight test programme will continue with the lithium-ion battery systems.

Airbus A350 says the cockpit design allows for future advances in navigation technology to be placed on the displays plus gives flexibility and capacity to upload new software and to combine data from multiple sources and sensors for flight management and aircraft systems control.

In 2005, GE was the launch engine of the original Airbus A350, aiming for 2010 deliveries, while Rolls-Royce offered its Trent 1700.

Airbus A350 issued service bulletins regarding onboard equipment and removed galley inserts because of leaks.

Airbus A350 had to address spurious overheating warnings in the bleed air system by retrofitting an original connector with a gold-plated connector.

In contrast, Singapore Airlines, the largest Airbus A350 operator, had not detected such problems with its fleet and continued to operate it.

On 20 December 2021, Airbus received a formal legal claim in the English courts filed by Qatar Airways, concerning the degradation of surface and paint on certain of the airline's A350 aircraft.

Three main variants of the Airbus A350 were launched in 2006, with entry into service planned for 2013.

The Airbus A350 Regional was expected to be ordered by Etihad Airways and Singapore Airlines.