A350 spends 2 days making tests in Azores.

During final phase of the certification test campaign, the A350 flew last Thursday 4/Sep to Azores. 

http://www.iloveazores.net/2014/09/airbus-a350-em-testes-nos-acoresvideos.html#.VAyPWmIayK0

It landed at 16h40, at the Santa Maria airport. It also flew over the other airport in Azores Islands (at Ponta Delgada). 

Picture by @flightradar24

The MSN5 prototype made different tests and circuits near Azores during these two days.

Photo by @santamariaazores.net

http://compararsantamaria.blogspot.com.es

On Saturday morning, the aircraft took off from the Santa Maria airport returning back to Toulouse after flying over Portugal and Spain.

Photo by @asasantamaria.blogspot.com

New design aspects of the XWB-97, the highest-thrust production engine ever developed by Rolls Royce.

The XWB-97 that will airborne on Airbus’s A380 flying testbed around mid-2015,  is a milestone engine in its own right. Derived from the 84,000-lb.-thrust Trent XWB-84 now powering the A350-900, the XWB-97 is rated at 97,000 lb. yet is externally identical to its lower-thrust sibling.

The engine is designed to power the 679,000-lb. maximum-takeoff-weight aircraft on ranges of up to 8,400 nm 8,000 nm (A350-1000 variant). Not only must this be achieved with the same efficiency of the baseline engine, it must be accomplished with the same 118-in.-dia. fan and external nacelle packaging.

Upcoming tests will focus initially on the newer design aspects of the XWB-97, specifically the higher-flow fan that pumps more air through changes to the tips and root areas of the blades.

The XWB-97 also is designed with a 5% larger core, higher-temperature capability and unshrouded high-pressure turbine blades. “The fan is turning 6% faster and is configured with an inflected annulus at the root, with detailed aerodynamic tweaks at the tip,” says Trent XWB Program Director Simon Burr.

“We have run the fan at higher speeds and already demonstrated well in excess of 100,000-lb. thrust on the XWB-84, so we have confidence in that,” he adds. The design also includes additional stages of blisks, 3 of which are used in the high-pressure compressor.

Burr also highlights the switch from a shrouded high-pressure turbine to an unshrouded design in the XWB-97. The technology is derived from the core of the EJ200 military engine used in the Eurofighter Typhoon and represents the first application of this design in a Rolls commercial engine.

“It enables us to do more work on that stage, and mechanically the system is scaled for more thrust,” he adds. However, the shroudless turbine, as with all major design trades, comes with complexities associated with the clearance control and cooling air systems.

As a result, Rolls has focused its early test efforts on the feature and is currently conducting trials on a set of full-scale shroudless blades in an XWB-84 demonstrator in the run up to XWB-97 tests.

Based on the article “Stepping Up” published in Aviation Week

Finnair estimating impacts on new A350 routes if Russia closes skies

Finnair said A350 planes due to join its fleet in 2015 have the potential to fly around Siberia to reach Asia should Russia implement plans to close airspace in response to European sanctions imposed over the Ukraine crisis.

Photo by.@Constantin Rulffs

Airbus’s newest A350 has the range required to detour and still reach destinations in Japan and China around which Finnair has built its business model, Chief Executive Officer Pekka Vauramo said. The A350s will have the capability for diversions, though Vauramo said “there are very few facts” available to indicate whether Russia will go ahead with airspace closures.

“The additional freight capacity of this plane translates to me that it does have the range, technically it’s possible,” the CEO said in a briefing in Vantaa, near Helsinki, while adding: “I don’t want to speculate about Russia. We all know too little about that one.”

Finnair will get the first four of 11 A350s on order in 2015, serving cities including Shanghai and Beijing, routes that could be impacted by a closing of Siberia’s skies.

Finnair’s comments suggest the hurdles facing carriers should Russia shut off eastern airspace that was opened up with the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union “would not be insurmountable,” said Sandy Morris an aerospace analyst at Jefferies International Ltd. in London.

“The fact that the A350 could probably do the fly-around is obviously an advantage,” Morris said. “It’s been a bit of a boon to airlines having that Russian airspace open up.”

Photo by.@Constantin Rulffs

With a long-haul strategy built around services connecting Europe with northeast Asia via the shortest routes over Russia, Finnair has more to lose than other carriers should Moscow elect to curb operations over Siberia.

Based on the article “Finnair Says A350 Has Range to Detour If Russia Closes Skies” published in Bloomberg

How to choose a A350 model for a present?

There is a pair of webs where you can buy a model to enjoy the A350 in your desk at the office or at home. There are different dimension models and different finishing & painting liveries.

Photo by @747-400ERX

The Airbus web includes a shop with 6 different models:

From the cheapest 1/144 Revell Model with a kit of 120 parts to assembly by yourself (29€) to the biggest 1/100 Graphideco model (410€)

http://www.airbus-shop.com/en/aircraft-models/a350xwb.html

Photo by @747-400ERX

The other web page with many A350 models is: http://www.airspotters.com/  If you type A350 in the search box it will bring up a list of models. A Open Day is scheduled for 7/Sep and there will be online offers for those that cannot attend it personally.

Other online shops:

http://www.flightmemory.com/shop/search/Airbus%20A350.html

http://www.aircraftmodelstore.co.uk/search.php?search_query=A350

  Photo by @747-400ERX

Enjoy your model, and if you know other webshops, please post it below in “comments”. Thanks.

Airbus doesn´t discard further increases in the A350 monthly production rate.

Airbus will explore ways to raise output of the A350 by seeking production enhancements such as faster manufacturing of carbon components.

“We’ll see improvements and additional buffer in our capacity as we keep improving processes that’ll give us potential for further increases,” A350 program director Didier Evrard said in an interview at the Farnborough Air Show.

Airbus has already created extra capacity at its assembly line in Toulouse and would need to do carbon layering more quickly and speed up installation processes to boost monthly production. That would include faster fitting of electrical equipment, brackets and pipes.

Airbus, in a perennial race with Boeing to supply airlines, has already sold delivery slots for at least the first 2 years of A350 production. Airbus COO-Customer John Leahy has said the biggest challenge to selling more planes is providing delivery schedules that are sufficiently early enough for customers.

“That’s the debate that we can start having in 2016, when we’re already half way through the ramp-up,” Evrard said. “With past aircraft programs, we’ve seen that increasing production by 20% isn’t impossible.”

“The A350-900 until now was managed as a development program,” Evrard said. “We’re now entering into serial production, so we can benefit from all the supply-chain management and Airbus processes” to move more quickly, he said.

Based on the article “Airbus Seeks to Quicken A350 Production With Nippier Processes” published in Bloomberg.

A350 XWB engines manufacturing maturity: experimental build-up area, preproduction line and standard pulsed production line.

A350-900 engine to the production line.

Rolls-Royce marks the final transition phase of the A350-900 engine from the preproduction to the standard pulsed “skillet” production line in a nearby site at the facility.

The switchover is underway with an early production engine (ESN 20027) designated the first XWB to move down the line, which is shared with Trent 1000s destined for the Boeing 787.

The first production-standard engine for the A350-900s were completed earlier this year and delivered as ESN20019 and 20020.

The move to the final assembly line gets underway with ESN20026, which will have its fan case assembled at the preproduction site before mating and stacking with the remainder of the engine on the standard line.

A350-1000 engine to the preproduction line.

In parallel, Rolls plans to move the A350-1000 engine XWB-97 from the experimental build-up area to the preproduction line in the 4th quarter of this year. Rolls is repeating the process it used with the XWB-84, preparing for the buildup to full-scale production of the XWB-97.

The preproduction line at Rolls´ main site in Derby will be used to develop assembly techniques and practices, helping to uncover and resolve any glitches on the assembly line, as well as offering early training for line workers.

During the preproduction phase again “thousands” of individual improvements to the build process are expected.

Series production in the future.

The first 8 flight engines for the A350-1000, and possibly more, will run through the pre-production line in 2015 in the buildup to first flight of the A350-1000 in 2016.

The 2 engine variants later will be integrated into a single “pulsed” production flow line that will assembly to record rates for a large Rolls commercial engine. Initial targets include a 6-day flow time.

“The facility, as designed, will go to 250 engines per year quite happily, and we shall see where we go from there,” adds Trent XWB Program Director Simon Burr.

Based on the article “Stepping Up” published in Aviation Week

A350 prototype first time in Austria because it was raining.

The MSN1 prototype has visited today Linz Airport in Austria in the first visit of the A350 to the country.

Some wet-test have been completed in Linz as it was raining with a temperature of 13º Celsius.

This wet tests (2 landings and 2 take-offs) are done to test the behavior of the aircraft under wet conditions.

In it´s way back to Toulouse, the A350-900 first prototype (equipped with Flight Test Instrumentation) has visited the Graz airport in Austria too.

The Type Certification of the A350-900 is expected in coming days.

A photographer team of “Austrian Wings” has been attending this special visit to Linz with many quality-pictures available here.

Based on the article “Fotobericht: Airbus A350-900 zu „Nasswetter-Tests“ in Linz” published in Austrian Wings.