Originally posted by Canada_EH
I remeber hearing something about the Canada frim being shafted by airbus in some sort of selection process but i forget what it was. Any chance you could enlighten my Fred?

The first A400M fuselage was delivered to Getafe on March 17th, 2007 for integration with the Nose fuselage, wings and empennage into a complete aircraft designated "A/C 5000"

The first complete fuselage barrel is the largest Airbus structures yet carried by the Beluga aircraft. Four more A400M fuselages are in series production at the Integrated Fuselage Assembly facility (IFA) in Bremen and are currently being equipped before delivery to the FAL. The fuselage barrels will be delivered complete with internal systems as well as their cargo ramps and rear doors.

Airbus Military has confirmed an “approximate” three-month delay to the start of final assembly of the A400M military transport, from the end of March to the end of June.

“We decided to delay the formal start of final assembly to ensure optimum subassembly quality” says an Airbus Military spokesman

The delay was agreed internally following a review of the programme undertaken as a result of the Airbus A380 delays. “We wanted to look at potential risk areas to make sure there weren’t any unexpected problems”, says the company.

The wing is also the first to feature an all-composite outer wing box. Airbus says it “believes this is the largest composite wing ever made”.

Airbus is maintaining its schedule for delivery of the first A400M in October 2009 despite an “approximate” three-month delay to the start of final assembly revealed by flightglobal last week.

Airbus' Stade, Germany, site has just dispatched the first A400M military transport aircraft vertical tailplane VTP to Getafe, Spain, where the static test aircraft final assembly is taking place.

As the VTP left Airbus’s Stade site on 17 April by truck, Thilo Liebig, Head of the A400M Team for Fuselage and VTP said: “This is a major milestone for the A400M programme.”

The target date for the first flight of the Europrop International (EPI) TP400-D6 turboprop has slipped into the fourth quarter of this year after the engine consortium was forced to redesign some mechanical components that encountered higher than expected loads during bench testing.....

A development engine suffered oil contamination during ground testing earlier this year, but the source of the problem could not be traced, it emerged at the Paris air show this week......

Airbus Military says it "remains very confident of achieving first flight and first delivery of the A400M on schedule", referring to goals of the first quarter of next year and late 2009 respectively. "The addition of the sixth flight-test aircraft will bring flexibility to the programme."