Great Milestone in the A350 XWB Program: Rolls-Royce Trent XWB achieves EASA type certification

European regulators have certificated the Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engine ahead of the planned first flight of the Airbus A350 XWB by mid-year.

Patrick Goudou, EASA's executive director, handed over the powerplant's typecertificate to Chris Young, Rolls-Royce's director for the Trent XWB program, at the European authority's headquarters in Cologne, Germany.

 

The approval covers the engines for the baseline A350-900 and planned smaller -800 variant. But the largest A350-1000 will require a higher thrust version of the engine which is still under development.

A350 XWB is exclusively powered by the Trent XWB, and the engines for the MSN001 are already at Toulouse final assembly.

 

Eric Schulz, President – Civil Large Engines, Rolls-Royce, said: “We are very proud to have achieved this significant milestone on the road to the A350 XWB’s entry into service. I would like to thank Airbus for their support and all of our partners and employees who contributed to the design and certification of the engine. Test results show we have produced the world’s most efficient large civil aero engine and we now look forward to the first flight later this year.”

Didier Evrard, Airbus’ Executive Vice President – Head of A350 XWB Programme said: “We congratulate our colleagues at Rolls-Royce on achieving this important milestone for the A350 XWB programme with the EASA certification of the Trent XWB engine.” He adds: “These new engines together with the aircraft’s advanced aerodynamics and airframe technologies will bring our airline customers a 25 percent step-improvement in fuel efficiency.”

 

The certification program.

Rolls-Royce says that the certification program involved 11 engines and led to a total runtime of around 3,100 hours. Ground tests began in 2010 in the UK (17/June/2010 was the Trent XWB First Engine Run), while flight trials started on Airbus's A380 test bed in February 2012.

The certification program included icing tests in Canada, hot weather trials in the UAE, altitude and crosswind assessments in the USA, and endurance tests in Spain. This global validation program has had 7 engines running all around the world; in AEDC (USA), INTA (Spain), Derby (UK), Stennis-Mississipi (USA), Glacier-Manitoba (Canada) and MTOC (Germany).

Maturity, maturity and maturity.

The development program has been focus on delivering maturity, with a flying testbed in the A380 MSN1, with several risk & reliability processes and early investments (in human talent resources and also in new facilities in USA, Singapore and UK). It was defined a complete representative testing campaign with timely event capture & resolution and health monitoring. Many maintainability analysis done for last 3 years and a specific pre-production facility built to assure that the manufacturing capability level is achieved before needed.

 Rolls-Royce is not alone.

This great milestone is shared with the strong capable risk and revenue sharing partnerships part of the Trent XWB supply chain; 75 suppliers worldwide, 16 Rolls-Royce plants, 12 partners and 25 dual sources. A Teamwork success. Congratulations!

 

The most advanced Trent … Optimised for the Airbus A350XWB

 

 

French Government lobbying Airbus in Turkey for an order of 15 A350 XWB aircraft

Airbus and Turkish Airlines are under negotiation of an order of 150 aircraft, including some A350 and A380 as announced the French Minister of the Foreign Trade during a visit to Turkey in January/2013.

Turkish Airlines, the world's fastest-growing airline, is considering an order for A320neo or 737MAX and they have ordered last December/2012 15 long-haul 777-300ER from Boeing to a $ 4.7 billion at catalog prices.

Nicole Bricq, Minister of foreign trade met Temel Kotil, the general manager of Turkish Airlines. "Discussions are ongoing, there will be no announcement or signing during the visit of the Minister," said a Ministry spokesman.

The order under discussion would be composed of 125 aircraft of the A320 family, 15 long-haul A350s and six to ten A380.

Turkish Airlines CEO Temel Kotil said: “We increased our recent order of 15 A330-300s by 5 more aircraft to 20.” Together with the recent order of 20 Boeing 777-300ERs, the 20 A330-300s “gives us 40 additional widebodies, which is a good number,” he said.

Kotil declined to comment on further aircraft orders, which are expected to be made by the carrier this year. “So far nothing is decided,” he said. “We are working hard on the decision”

A350 XWB ailerons are designed and manufactured in TAI, Turkish Aerospace Industries.

Based on the article “Airbus discute d'une commande de 150 avions en Turquie-ministre” published in Les Echos

Air Lease orders 25 A350s including five -1000s

Lessor Air Lease has underpinned the Airbus A350-1000 by ordering five of the type as well as 20 A350-900s.

The leasing firm has also firmed options on 14 A321neo twinjets.Airbus says the company has options for five more A350-1000s. The deal marks the third endorsement of the largest member of the A350 family since its redesign.

The order takes the A350 backlog to more than 600 aircraft.

Steven Udvar-Hazy’s Air Lease’s order is a boost for Airbus as Boeing works to fix electrical faults that spurred regulators to order the global Dreamliner fleet parked last month. Udvar-Hazy, the lessor’s chief executive officer and founder, has 12 787s on order and hadn’t yet ordered any A350s, a model that will make its commercial debut in 2014 after suffering delays.

Udvar-Hazy earned a reputation as the godfather of the jet- leasing industry after starting International Lease Finance Corp. in 1973, which he sold to American International Group Inc. in 1990. He left ILFC in 2010 and founded Air Lease.

 

Based on the article “Airbus Wins $9 Billion Order as Hazy Adds A350s to 787s” published in Bloomberg

The objective to flight in Le Bourget more than challenging; "It is a possibility, but not a probability," But the certification schedule even more challenging than the first flight.

Based on a visit to the A350 FAL last Friday 1^st of February of the journalists from the Press Association Aviation (AJPAE) with Airbus CEO Fabrice Bregier, the A350 schedule seems to be specially challenging, and as written by Les Echos  “especially because of the delays by a supplier” , called Spirit. 

A little more than 5 months of the Le Bourget Airshow, the first aircraft of the A350 being assembled, still seems far away from the first flight.

Ground Tests are ongoing on MSN1 at station 30 inside the FAL. Many indoor ground tests continues  to demonstrate the readiness of systems and identify any defect in this phase before the aircraft moves to the next station. In these test, all type of systems are checked, as air conditioning, electrical systems and hydraulic systems. Another test for which no photo is available yet is the typical main landing gear extension-retraction test. The MSN1 will go for painting and Rolls&Royce engines installation and afterwards, an extensive set of outdoors ground tests will be required.

MSN1 aircraft in st.30 on 1st February 2013

Given these steps, it is very unlikely that the A350 would be ready before the summer and making a first appearance at Le Bourget show, 17-23 June. Without excluding it totally, Fabrice Brégier, CEO of Airbus, acknowledges this himself: "It is a possibility, but not a probability," he said. "On the other hand, I commit to what the first flight did not take place in Toulouse during the show", he added jokingly. 

However, the most striking during the visit to the FAL was the absence of other items except the MSN1 in the assembly line. The station 50, where are assembled sections of fuselage from Saint-Nazaire and Germany, was completely empty. Same thing in the station 40 where wings from Great Britain are fixed. According to information gleaned on site, the assembly of the sections of the MSN3 will begin "in the coming days”. However they were originally planned for December. The American manufacturer Spirit, which makes the central section of the fuselage, would be at the origin of these delays. Airbus had to send engineers to this supplier to help solving its problems.

Result: all activity of the FAL focuses, for the time being, around the MSN1.

 

Based on the article “L'Airbus A350 mal parti pour voler au Bourget” published in Les Echos

Trent XWB engine cold weather tests ongoing in Canada

Airbus is in Iqaluit (Canada) cold weather testing the Rolls-Royce Trent XWB using its A380 MSN001 testbed.

cold tests at -23 celsius in North Canada

"It is the engine which is going to power very shortly the A350 aircraft that is going to make its maiden flight this summer," said Emanuele Costanzo, a test flight engineer with Airbus.

"For Iqaluit, the airport is qualified for the A380, the support is qualified for the handling and you don't have no more traffic here. So for us it's very easy to perform the test because we are near to alone here. It's nice." said Pascal Verneau's test engineer that is fifth time in Iqaluit.

Iqaluit International Airport is used also by Boeing, Bombardier, Cessna and Eurocopter.

click the image to watch a video

“It's the middle of winter and you have 30 people or so come in on these missions” said the Airport director .

Costanzo said he enjoys the northern hospitality in Iqaluit and the Arctic char. "When we came the first time in 2006, we had a very good experience and so since we have the temperatures here that are suitable to our test, we decided to come back here," he said.

Based on the article “Airbus cold-weather tests new engine in Iqaluit” published in CBC News.

Back-up Plan for batteries´ issue prepared for A350 XWB but not populated to avoid transferring the media-focus from 787 to the A350 XWB.

Airbus CEO said a Plan B for A350´s lithium ion battery design is developed and he stressed that he´s frustated over the attention the A350 is getting as a result of the Boeing 787 issues.

But after knowing that Airbus identified & presented at a closed meeting with airliners in March/2011the risks of lithium-ion batteries (click to watch the presentation), if Airbus has not populated any mitigation plan and any detail about the design & fire protections of its lithium-ion batteries, the concerns about the impact on the A350 XWB development are on the table.

"We identified this fragility at the start of development and we think we resolved it about a year ago," Bregier said. "Nothing prevents us from going back to a classical plan that we have been studying in parallel."

The absence of answers from Airbus leads to the conclusions that there is no fire suppression in A350 XWB; although Halon can be used to suppress small fires, a thermal runaway can only be suppressed by water, and plenty of it. It means weight. It took firefighters more than 1 hour to put out the blaze on the JAL airplane. Not confirmed but it seems A350 design has venting overboard -that the Boeing design does not- and Halon. 

"We studied the integration of these batteries on the A350 very carefully," Airbus Chief Executive Fabrice Bregier told a group of French aerospace journalists on Thursday. "I am very relaxed about this.".

"We have a robust design. If this design has to evolve, we have the time to do that," Bregier said. "If it has to change in a more drastic way because the authorities reach the conclusion that the technology is not mature, then we have all the time we need to do this on the A350 before first delivery in the second half of 2014."

 "I'm not going to give any lessons to Boeing. At the same time, I don't have to take any either, when I think we have done well and have a plan which allows me to have aircraft flying with batteries that don't catch fire."

In parallel and –unfortunately- probably without any kind of communication, Boeing is working on its own Plan B which is to build a containment box around the battery (similar to the Cessna approach).

Based on the article “Airbus says it has a 'Plan B' for A350 jet batteries” published in Reuters.

A350 XWB virtually makes it´s First Flight.

The test-bed A350 XWB - known as "aircraft zero" - has started its virtual first flight (VFF) program, which Airbus describes as "a key step in the final preparation for the actual first flight of aircraft MSN001 by the middle of this year".

 

"Aircraft zero" is, in its own way, real: it is the linking of the "iron bird" electric, hydraulic and flight control test bench with a flight deck integration simulator. The manufacturer explains: "This provides the closest core system test environment to the effective first flight of MSN 1. For this campaign, aircraft zero is equipped with a standard of equipment fully representative of MSN 1's first flight."

Airbus continues: "The campaign, set to last for several months, has two main objectives. The first is to prepare for first flight, by simulating normal and abnormal operational scenarios prior to first flight, verifying the aircraft systems and handling aspects. The second objective is to ensure maturity by detecting and resolving potential issues as early as possible. The VFF campaign will also allow the flight crew to fully prepare for the first flight and the subsequent flight test program."

 

Based on the article “Virtual first flights for the A350” published in Flightglobal