Japan´s ANA says to Boeing that the A350-1000 is a good candidate to replace 777s. Compensation on 787 grounding starts to be negotiated.

Japan's All Nippon Airways considers the Airbus A350 a "good candidate" to replace some Boeing 777s, its chief executive said, in a sign that the airline could place its first order for Airbus big jets.

787 grounding has oppened some eyes in Japan

"The A350-1000 can be a good candidate for us," Osamu Shinobe said on the sidelines of an airlines conference. "It is realistic to consider this as a replacement for the 777. In the near future, when we look at the replacement candidates, this can be a very good and strong candidate."

 

Japanese airlines have long been considered a fortress for Airbus's US rival Boeing. Japan Airlines is also considered a candidate to buy the Airbus A350-1000.

 

Boeing is offering a revamped version of its best-selling wide-body jet, the 777, but so far ANA is not "aggressively" looking at the so-called 777-9X upgraded model, Shinobe said.

The decision will not be taken in Paris Air Show; “I’d be very surprised, but I can say I’m looking for an improvement in our market share in Japan. We have nowhere to go but up. I would be hopeful we will get a breakthrough in Japan, but I don’t want to predict a timeline,” Leahy said. Breaking Boeing’s decades-long monopoly is not easy job.

Based on the article “ANA chief says A350 "good candidate" to replace Boeing 777s” published in Reuters.

Only when the milestone is “more than achievable” it will be announced. A350 XWB remains challenging and the conservative/official forecast says that “it will fly this summer”

Nick Cunningham, an analyst at Agency Partners in London who has followed the aviation industry for 30 years, said Airbus has “played it straight” with the A350 program in not announcing milestones before they’re genuinely achievable.

“Having the A350 fly by the Paris air show would be great from a prestige point of view,” he said. “But they’ll only do it if they’re really comfortable. They’re not going to be pushed.”

 

“The biggest lessons we can draw from the past is that we need to move from one step to the other on these big programs, without rushing,” Airbus CEO Fabrice Bregier said at last summer’s Farnborough show.

EADS CFO Harald Wilhelm called some weeks ago the A350 program “challenging”, an attribute the company has used in the past to describe the project. Still, the company is more confident of a first flight by this “summer.” “The important thing is that it’s a mature first flight,” Wilhelm said on a call to discuss EADS’s first-quarter earnings.

 

EADS CEO Tom Enders said in a shareholders' meeting in Amsterdam last week that the project to A350 XWB remained challenging; "Intense preparations are under way for the first flight and I am quite confident this will take place (in line with) a conservative forecast in the summer; a more courageous version is in some weeks."

“We’ll do it when we’re ready to do it,” was John Leahy’s response. “We are not going to fall victim like Boeing did with the 787 [by tying themselves into a date before they are ready].

Based on the article “EADS hikes Airbus order goal, A350 to fly in weeks” published in Reuters.

MSN1; braking tests started before the critical RTO Rejected TakeOff test. The French traffic control strike will force to postpone the First Flight until Friday 14/June.

Airbus started carrying out braking tests of the A350-900 prototype at Toulouse on 9 June, as it continued progress towards the first flight of aircraft MSN1.

 The aircraft performed braking manoeuvres at various speeds on the runway at Blagnac.

A source familiar with the A350 test regime said the high-speed rejected take-off test has not yet taken place.

“Airbus has not commented on when the first flight of the A350 might take place. But the source indicates that a first flight is unlikely before 13 June.”

French air transport is facing disruption this week by a strike which affects civil aviation authority DGAC. Airbus test programs have previously used a dedicated group of affiliated air traffic control personnel, meaning that an A350 test flight could proceed unhindered. The 72h strike from 11-13 June will result in a "minimum service" from French air traffic control. And Airbus doesn´t want to take more risks than strictly necessary in a flight that will extend for around four hours.

Based on the article “A350 starts critical braking tests at Toulouse” published in FlightGlobal

Get Ready. A350 XWB First Flight next week.

Some day at the end of next week (weather conditions permitting because

pilots need a day when wind is blowing from the west so as to use a northwesterly runway, avoiding flying over Toulouse) the A350-900 MSN001 will take-off around 10:00h from Toulouse.

All Airbus employees based at Toulouse will join the milestone in the special viewing spots at Blagnac (H10), Saint Martin, Clément Ader/Louis Breguet and  Jean-Luc Lagardère to watch live the take-off and landing on site.

There will be live connection to all European sites (Nantes, St Nazaire, Hamburg/Finky, Bremen, Stade, Buxtehude, Filton, Broughton, Getafe, Puerto Real, Illescas, Sevilla, Puerto Santa Maria), US (Witchita and Mobile) and India.

Fabrice Brégier , Didier Evrard, Fernando Alonso, Gordon McConnell, John Leahy, Kiran Rao and flight crew will make speeches at around 16:00h.

 

For the first flight, “we start in the middle of the envelope” in terms of speed, center of gravity and other parameters such as altitude”, an A350 project test pilot Chapman explains. The take-off and initial phase of the flight will be performed in direct law with the flight control computers disconnected.

Chandler and Magrin are planning to take the aircraft to an initial altitude of 10,000 ft. and a speed of around 200 knots. “They then look at gear retraction,” says Chapman, who will be cooperating with the crew of a chase aircraft that is monitoring the MSN001’s process.

 

Once the gear has been successfully retracted, Chandler is planning to switch on the flight control computers and push the speed up to the higher end of the range and go up to 25,000 ft.

High speed and high altitude testing is to be performed at up to 43,000 ft. before approach and arrival preparations are begun. The aircraft is then to make a fly past over the runway at 1,000 ft. before returning to the field for landing.

The flight will also be the first chance to study behavior that no simulator or wind tunnel has so far been able to predict, such as the airflow at slow speeds near the ground.

 

Chapman says a thorough evaluation of flight data will be conducted. “We won’t do the second flight until we understand what has happened and why,” Chapman says.

A dozen flights should be enough to give a verdict on basic performance, but at least 2,000 hours of development and safety certification tests lie ahead before the A350 can enter service.

Airbus plans to introduce more pilots to A350 flying quickly, but over the first few weeks it will only by a group of four. Eventually all 20 experimental test pilots will participate in the campaign.

 

On the A380 maiden flight in 2005, the gear failed to retract properly

Airbus has been considering an A350 flight display at the Paris air show, but Chapman cautions that pilots and engineers need to be fully comfortable with doing that and authorities must agree, too, to flying a test aircraft over Paris.

Based on the article “Airbus In Final Preparations For A350 First Flight” published in AviationWeek.

Airbus announces crew for A350 XWB First Flight

When the first A350 XWB to fly, known as MSN1, makes its maiden flight, an international crew of six will be on board, comprising two Flight Test Pilots, one Test Flight Engineer and three Flight Test Engineers.

 

2 test pilots and the Project test flight engineer will be located in the cockpit:

·         Peter Chandler, an Experimental Flight Test Pilot with Airbus since 2000 and Chief Test Pilot since 2011; He was closely linked to the testing of the Airbus A380 and he will be piloting a maiden flight for the first time in his career.

·         Guy Magrin, an Experimental Flight Test Pilot with Airbus since 2003 and Project Pilot for the A350 XWB. He is a French former squadron leader and ex-A320 and A330 pilot.

·         Pascal Verneau, who has held various positions in Airbus' flight test division since 1999 and is the A350 XWB Project Test Flight Engineer. He supported development testing of the A380 and A340-600.

A350 XWB Project pilots have been heavily involved in cockpit and systems design and integrations from the operational perspective.

 

The 3 remaining first flight test crew members, all of them Experimental Flight Test Engineers, will be working at dedicated flight test stations and managing the progress of the flight profile:

·         Fernando Alonso, Flight Test Engineer with Airbus since 1982 and Head of Airbus Flight & Integration Test Centre since 2007

·         Patrick du Ché, Flight Test Engineer with Airbus since 2001 and currently Head of Development Flight Tests since 2012.

·         Emanuele Costanzo, Flight Test Engineer with Airbus since 2004 and lead Flight Test Engineer for the Trent XWB engine.

 

Airbus has been familiarizing the crew with MSN1 through twice-weekly simulator sessions, each lasting up to 5 hours, using its Aircraft Zero integrated test system. Aircraft Zero connects a simulated cockpit to the "iron bird" rig featuring the A350's primary control systems.

 

During the First Flight Ceremony, Flight operations chief Fernando Alonso will also participate in the speeches after Airbus CEO F.Bregier and A350 Program Manager D.Evrard.

Based on the article “Airbus names A350 flight-test crew” published in FlightGlobal

“A first flight by Paris would bring a huge credibility boost for Airbus”

Airbus teams in the FAL and in the Flight Test Dept. are working hard to get the A350 XWB off the ground in time to scoop the headlines at next Paris air show.

A flight around the year’s biggest aviation expo, starting June 17, would let Airbus steal the limelight from Boeing, which aims to use the event to spur orders for an updated 777 and revitalize the 787 program hit by a months-long grounding.

“A first flight by Paris would bring a huge credibility boost for Airbus just as people are having doubts about Boeing’s execution,” according to Richard Aboulafia, vice president of U.S.-based Teal Group, who says the 787’s woes and slow progress with the 777 revamp give Airbus a “window of opportunity.”

 

Gilles Fournier, managing director for the Paris air show, told journalists last month he expects the A350 to fly by the start of the event, though there are no firm plans for a visit.

An A350 flight by mid-June could have a snowball effect for Airbus, building sales momentum for the A350-1000 variant due to begin deliveries in 2017, even as Boeing seeks to drum up orders for the competing 777X, according to Teal Group’s Aboulafia.

Based on the article “Airbus A350’s Paint Job Points to Paris-Show Blow for Boeing” published in Bloomberg

As usual, Boeing and Airbus “prepare” the summer Air Shows in the media. This year with the wide-body aircraft market.

Boeing and Airbus, which share a duopoly in the market for large commercial jets, have been known to trade the occasional jibe about their products and strategy, accusing each other of making misleading claims about their planes’ performance.

Airbus had struck a more supportive note during the three-month grounding of the Dreamliner, only to resume a more aggressive stance as the A350’s maiden flight approaches in coming weeks.

  

Boeing CEO Jim McNerney said last week at an investor conference that Airbus doesn’t “have an airframe that can compete” with the 777X, the upgraded version of Boeing’s biggest twin-engine plane, “They don’t have the appetite to do a ground-up airplane, and they’d have to do a ground-up airplane.” He wanted to point out that Airbus doesn't have a competing airplane to the 777-9X (a derivative of the 777).

 

“It’ll take another 5, 6 or 7 years before they can respond to this airplane. We’re way ahead of them and it’s going to be fun. We’ve got them boxed in on the A350 at the top (with 777X) and we’ve got them boxed in at the bottom with 787.”

The answer from Airbus came with Tom Enders (EADS CEO and ex-Airbus CEO) when he told investors at the annual shareholders meeting that “the A350 XWB a real aircraft.”  

 

“The aircraft we rolled out a couple of weeks ago didn’t have rivets from Wal-Mart, like the ones our competitors had at the time off their roll-out,”

Enders’s comment was directed specifically at the plane that Boeing presented publicly on July 8, 2007, timed to coincide with the plane’s name -- 787. The first 787 to actually fly didn’t come until 1 1/2 years later.

 

Fabrice Bregier, the Airbus CEO who succeeded Enders, kept the roll-out to a low-key event reserved only for employees. The humble ceremony compared with Boeing’s jubilant unveiling of the 787 Dreamliner in 2007, an event hosted by former television news anchor Tom Brokaw before 15,000 people and broadcast live by satellite.

Based on the article “Airbus Accused of Gutless Models Hits Back at Boeing 787 Parts” published in Bloomberg