Comments on the JAL order. Between the huge win of Airbus and the heartbreak for Boeing.

“This is seriously bad for Boeing. They need to do a little soul searching,” said Richard Aboulafia, airline analyst with Teal Group. “The 787 problems inevitably led to doubts about execution, resources and time. It’s the price to be paid for passivity, by not launching the 777X one year ago,” said Aboulafia.

"This is a huge win for Airbus and a big loss for Boeing," said aerospace analyst Scott Hamilton, managing director of Seattle-based Leeham Co.

"Airbus has been trying to break the wide-body monopoly of Boeing for decades and likewise Boeing has been wanting to keep Airbus out of JAL and ANA."

"It's a heartbreak," Kostya Zolotusky, managing director of Boeing Capital Corp. "We recognise that we made it very challenging for them in introducing 787 and will work to correct that," he said.

“Airbus won the JAL order on its own merits, but only after the airline's confidence in Boeing took such a knock that they had to look objectively at all options” is stated on the Airliners forum.

“I still believe that Japan Airlines ordered the A350 because it was the better plane and, more importantly, because Airbus spent years in a carefully-orchestrated mission to convince Japan Airlines management that it was the better plane. Even if the 787 had executed far better than it did in both development and deployment, I believe Airbus' concerted effort would have won them the deal” summarized another comment on Airliners.

"With this order, it gives us more momentum to look for potential joint R&D efforts for the future generation of aircraft," Fabrice Bregier Airbus CEO told a news conference in Tokyo with JAL President Yoshiharu Ueki.

Ambassadors from Britain, Germany and France and the European Union representative in Japan attended the briefing, each with national flags displayed before of them.


Based on the article “Airbus clinches landmark jet order with Japan Airlines” published in Reuters

New livery for the MSN2, the first flight prototype with cabin interior equipped

With the first pictures of the MSN2, we can confirm that a new livery for this aircraft –and very probably for the MSN5- is going to be shown in coming weeks. The MSN2 is the 3rd prototype that will join the certification flight-program on the first weeks of 2014 and it is the first prototype with cabin interior equipped.

MSN2 Vertical Tail "protected"

In the pictures currently available, the “A350” words are painted in white letters in the Vertical Tail and will be highlighted on a black background. The vertical tail plane for MSN2 has been “protected” after been painted and until the complete aircraft goes to the paint shop, we will not be able to watch the new livery. The wing and the horizontal tail will remain in grey-white color as for the other prototypes and the new black painting scheme will probably be applied to the half of the fuselage, being the rear part of the fuselage in black and more & more white until arriving to the nose fuselage that will be in the “standard” white.

MSN1 Vertical Tail when it was painted

The black painting would simulate carbon fiber structure as shown in the picture above.

Winglets, one of the identity brand of the aircraft will probably be painted in this “carbon-fiber” black. And the nose fuselage will be identical than the other prototypes.


The 3 modules of the crew rest compartment have already been installed in the rear part of the fuselage in the MSN2. And the cabin activity will increase in coming weeks in the station 20.

The MSN5, the second cabin equipped aircraft will probably be painted with the same livery than the MSN2. These two aircraft will be used for different tests and also they will participate in the A350 road-show all around the world in different air shows.

First flight of the second A350 XWB prototype MSN3.

4 months later the MSN1 first flight, the second A350 XWB to fly, MSN3, has joined the flight test program at Tolouse-Blagnac Airport, after successfully completing its first flight that lasted approximately 5 hours.

The MSN3 test aircraft was flown by Frank Chapman and Thierry Bourges, Airbus Test Pilots. Accompanying them in the cockpit was Gérard Maisonneuve, Test Flight Engineer, while three Flight Test Engineers monitored the progress of the flight profile: Tuan Do, Robert Lignée and Stéphane Vaux.

MSN3 - similarly to MSN1 - has no cabin but is equipped with heavy flight test installation and will be used for performance tests.

The aircraft, MSN3, took off at about 09:50 local time and flew north-west to the Bay of Biscay. It has landed back at Toulouse-Blagnac Airport France, shortly after 14:30 hours local time.

Based on the press release “Second A350 XWB test aircraft successfully completes first flight” published by Airbus.

Delivery plan for first customers of the A350-900 in 2015 being adjusted.

First 4 deliveries will be for Qatar Airways, launch customer. But for the rest of the customers, an arrangement is being negotiated at Airbus. Finnair and Vietnam Airlines are involved with others.

Finnair, the launch company in Europe, said it would receive the first aircraft only in the second half of 2015 owing to production delays.

"We have 11 in firm orders but now 8 options instead of 4 options," said Kati Ihamaki, Finnair's vice president for sustainable development. "The problem is the first delivery will be not in the beginning of 2015 but in the second part of 2015 because (of) delays of production," she said on the sidelines of a news conference in Paris.

Ihamaki said Finnair originally expected the first aircraft already at the end of 2014, and while it understood the delay in the delivery of the new aircraft, the airline was eager to introduce them into its fleet as they were key for its Asian development strategy.

Airbus said, however, that there has not been any change in its delivery schedule for Finnair for two years. “There are no new delays in the project and that the first aircraft would be delivered to Qatar Airways in the second half of 2014 as currently foreseen.”

Vietnam Airlines has 12 A350-900 on order and they expect to receive the first A350 in 2016 under the contract to buy 10 aircraft of this type that its general director Pham Ngoc Minh signed with Airbus in Hanoi in December 2007. Later, at the Paris Air Show in June 2009, Vietnam Airlines signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Airbus for 2 additional A350-900.

Vietnam Airlines CEO said that they plan to use its 16 787-9s and 12 A350-900s on similar missions but the carrier needs to acquire both types because neither manufacturer has enough slots to meet the carrier's requirement for 55 to 60 widebodies by 2020.

"With manufacturers it's sometimes difficult for me to push them, especially for next-generation because for next-generation they have certain difficulties. But the market is there and we have an ambitious plan," Minh says. "We can't wait. We have to add more A330s and maybe more 777s until the time we can replace all of it."

He says Vietnam is trying to speak to Boeing about moving up to earlier 787-9 slots but so far it has been difficult to get a firm plan from the manufacturer. "They've delayed six times already. I don't know how many more times they will delay," he says.

He adds Vietnam Airlines is looking to expand its Boeing 777-200 and Airbus A330 fleets to fill the gap caused by the extensive delivery delays to its 787s. They are also negotiating with Airbus to advance as much as possible their deliveries, and this could require re-arrangements on the delivery plan.



Based on the article “Lightweight Airbus A350 due later than expected” published in AFP and on the article “Vietnam Airlines switches 787 order to -9s” published in FlightGlobal.

Flight test program of MSN1 ongoing. More than 350 hours and 70 "missions".

To date, the A350 XWB MSN1 has completed around 350 flight test hours out of the campaign’s total 2,500 hours which are to be achieved by five flight test A350’s over the next 12 months. Entry into commercial service of the A350-900 is scheduled for the second half of 2014.

First development-VMU tests were performed last 26/Sep in Paris-Vatry airport with no special issue reported.

The VMU "Velocitiy minimum unstick" is much lower than the speed that will be used later when entry into service. From this dangerous low test speed range the prototype-aircraft must then accelerate, stabilize and then safely withdraw.

These test series are considered to be one of the most demanding maneuver of the entire test-program. The aerodynamic effect of the rudder is severely restricted due to the extremely low speed. There was the theoretical risk of seriously damaging the MSN1, which could delay the entire certification program; and it has been sucessfully mitigated in the first development-test.

The second test aircraft MSN3 will join the test program next week with the first flight in comming days after the RTO tests done during last 2 days.

Based on the press release “Airbus and Japan Airlines sign their first ever order” published by Airbus.

How Airbus worked out the contract with JAL. Getting JAL management to develop confidence in the A350 XWB, based on personal trust.

"This goes beyond an order for 31 A350s," Bregier said in an interview from Tokyo. "It's a major event. Japan is a country where personal relations are essential. I've spent more time there than in any other market."

30 years after he began his business career selling aluminum in Japan, Bregier logged 50.000 miles on 4 trips to Tokyo in his first year as Airbus CEO.

Bregier in December/2012 made his first 13-hour flight to meet JAL executives in his new capacity as CEO and also secured an audience with future prime minister, Shinzo Abe. One month later, with the 16/January/2013 grounding of Boeing's rival 787 after 2 battery fires, Bregier stepped up his campaign in an encounter with JAL Chairman Kazuo Inamori at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

At Bregier's side in Switzerland was Stephane Ginoux, Airbus's head of Japan. A Karate expert and fluent Japanese speaker, Ginoux spent 30 years in the country and knew that getting beyond Airbus's 5% market share would require patience and working at relationships. "In Japan, one is judged for duration," Ginoux said in 2011. Ginoux and Bregier where colleagues in Japan 30 years ago working in Eurocopter and on 2010 Ginoux was appointed as Airbus Head in Japan.

By March/2013, Bregier was back in Japan, and he invited a team of JAL experts to Toulouse for visits in May and again in June. JAL CEO Ueki, a former pilot who spent his flying career on Boeings took the chance to try out one of its A380 simulators.

Ueki said he found the Airbus side-mounted joystick control, which differs from the traditional central column found in Boeing cockpits, easy to use.

On September/2013 Bregier joined a flight test demonstrating the full confidence on the A350 and on the team that has been working on it for many years. Showing confidence again.

"The real challenge was getting them to develop confidence in Airbus," Bregier said. "We went to a lot of trouble to really build that confidence, working not just with commercial people, but with management, with engineers, with technical support people, with flight-test crew, who until this point really knew us hardly at all."

“If you believe that from Toulouse, you can convince people here who have flown the competitor for 30, 40 years that you have the best product, then you are just damn wrong,” said Mr. Brégier, referring Airbus’s hometown in France. “The problem wasn’t Japan or Japanese customers. The problem was probably Airbus.”


Based on the article “How Airbus wooed Japan Airlines” published in Bloomberg

The fleet of 5 Beluga aircraft are the backbone of the A350 XWB ramp up plan.

Airbus’s record aircraft output relies increasingly on a fleet of 5 Belugas which should be operating at 10.000 hours annually by 2017. That’s twice their usage in 2011, as the transport aircraft carry more components between Germany, France, Spain and the U.K.

With facilities scattered around Europe, the Belugas are a vital tool in piecing together the new A350 XWB. Since the first Beluga entered service 20 years ago, production has quadrupled to 600 planes a year.

“We are entering into the most critical phase of the A350 program,” Tom Enders, CEO EADS said. “Ramp-up is underway, and we need to deliver on our commitments to our customers and our first customers particularly for the 350 next year.”

The Belugas shuttle between sites such as Broughton (Wales), to pick up the wings, and Getafe (Spain), or Hamburg (Germany) for tail parts to bring them back to the final assembly line in Toulouse for construction.

The Belugas are based on Airbus’s A300-600, a commercial wide-body model no longer in production so this means that Airbus wouldn’t be able to make additional Belugas. The plane’s main deck cargo volume is greater than that of the Antonov AN-124, though still smaller than the largest Antonov, the An-225. Cargo weight capacity of 47 metric tons is only about a third of that on either Antonovs, because the plane is designed for volume, not weight, said Stephane Gosselin, who runs the Beluga (BELU) fleet.

Every A350 produced will required more than 45 hours of ferry flights, compared with about 8 flight hours for a single-aisle plane, said Gosselin. That’s because sections such as wings are 4 times more voluminous than for Airbus’s A320 series, requiring more trips to get parts to Toulouse.
Under the so-called Fly 10,000 program, Airbus will crank up the use of Belugas to 18 hours a day, six days a week, from an average of 12 hours daily on five days by 2017.

Achieving that target requires more than training additional pilots to add flight hours. The company is also working to improve the infrastructure where the transport hooks up with production facilities, to speed up the transfer of parts, Gosselin said.

To accelerate loading of parts onto the plane, Airbus will start constructing of additional facilities at its main stations in Bremen and Hamburg in Germany, Saint Nazaire in France, Broughton in Wales, and Getafe in Spain. The investment is needed because the Belugas often have to perform loading operations outside the hangars and the facilities will protect it from adverse weather that could slow progress.

A picture of the new line station which will provide a weatherproof facility for off-loading and storing wings.

Plans to construct a multi-million pound Beluga loading and unloading dock at Airbus Broughton have been given the green light. The 5,000 metre-square facility will be operational from 6am-12pm Monday to Friday, 6am-9pm Saturday and 8am-6pm on Sunday.




Based on the article “Airbus Hunchback Beluga Plays Star Role in A350 Ramp-Up” published in Bloomberg and on the article “Airbus get permission for multi-million pound unloading dock for the Beluga at Broughton” published in The Daily Post