A350 First Flight (and Live Stream)

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.

www.airlinereporter.com...

e Airbus A350 XWB is a family of long-range, wide-body jet airliners under development by European aircraft manufacturer Airbus.[Nb 1] The A350 will be the first Airbus with both fuselage and wing structures made primarily of carbon fibre-reinforced polymer.[6] It will carry 250 to 350 passengers in three-class seating, depending on variant.

The launch customer for the A350 is Qatar Airways, which ordered 80 aircraft across the three variants.[7] Development costs are projected to be €12 billion (US$15 billion or £10 billion).[8] The airliner is scheduled to enter airline service in mid-2014.[3] As of February 2013, 617 aircraft have been ordered.[7]

en.wikipedia.org...

Live stream can be found here:

1. www.a350xwbfirstflight.com...

or.

2. www.airlinereporter.com...

Flight will be about 55 minutes from the time I post this, although that's assuming they stick to schedule precisely.

Overall a good step up for commercial aviation, more fuel efficient, easier to maintain, cleaner, longer ranged, and safer than the aircraft it will replace.

Cheers.

The flight is traceable on FR24 as well, set filter to A359.





Wonder if the French chemmies are getting excited, shame it's too low

Here's a couple of photos of the takeoff, not my own unfortunately, but from flight global which encourages sharing its images.

reply to post by waynos


Is it just me, or do the engines look oversized for the size of the fuselage?

reply to post by Zaphod58


They do look huge, those of the 787 look the same to me. When you compare them both with something like the A330 the difference is dramatic.

reply to post by waynos


They look more proportional on the Dreamliner to me. I think that the fuselage is a little wider on the 787 as opposed to the A350, which throws the proportions off.

Heres one of my weekend snaps of an A330. Got some nice ones of an Emirates A380 too. If anything I think the shorter body of the 787-8 makes it look even wider compared to the A350-900, It might be easier to compare them when they have directly competing models flying.

nice

Video: