A350 flights to Nepal with medics and relief supplies.

MSN5 flight prototype with cabin interior is flying to Katmandu transporting aid relief and medical personnel on behalf of several French NGOs.

Source: Constantin Rulffs

The A350 will on it's return-flight repatriate roughly 200 French nationals.

Airbus Fundation is working with Nepal Airlines in a delivery flight of an A320 this week from Hamburg.

Update1: onboard high nutritious food products provided by Action contre la Faim, medical equipment and personnel for Médecins du Monde, emergency freight and personnel on behalf of Pompiers du Rhône and 25 humanitarian personnel, six medical personnel and two from the French Foreign Ministry.

Update2:
The aircraft returned back to France in less than a day after picking up more than 200 survivors at Katmandu airport.

The A350 touched down Paris CDG airport at 5.45am with 206 people on board. 

There were 12 children and 26 injured people, 2 of them in a very serious condition.

Although the large majority were French, there were also Germans, Swiss, Italians, Portuguese, Turks and Koreans.

A350 MSN3 without engines.

Batch-1 A350 prototypes have rework scheduled as part of the Final Assembly process.

Source: Publico.pt

This rework is a matter of weeks as compared to years for the initial 787.

Airbus has installed temporary rework hangars made out of tents to cater for this rework.

Source: jleroch

The flight test prototype MSN3 had their engines removed last weeks at Toulouse.

Based on the article “Bjorn’s Corner: Boeing’s 787 and Airbus’ 350 programs, a snapshot” published in Leeham News.

Some A350 suppliers could start repatriating work to Europe.

Airbus sees continued strength in the aircraft market and may be able to increase production of its most popular jets beyond their planned rates if that trend continues.

Fabrice Bregier, chief executive of the plane making unit of Airbus Group, said he believed Airbus would eventually recapture the top plane making slot from Boeing as its new A350 jet comes into its own, but market share came second to profitable growth.

Airbus is well placed to deliver 15 wide-body A350s this year and continues to expect more orders than deliveries in 2015, he said in Paris at a briefing to French aerospace media association AJPAE.

Bregier said the weak euro would not have much short-term impact on Airbus due to hedging, but that it would provide immediate benefits to small export-oriented parts suppliers.

Some of those smaller companies in the supply chain may stop offshoring work to cheaper locations and start repatriating work to Europe as a result of currency moves, he added.

Based on the article “Airbus Upbeat On Aircraft Market” published in Reuters

An issue with engine-vibration could delay 3rd A350 delivery to Qatar

3rd A350 for Qatar is already at the Customer Delivery Center at Toulouse and has completed some flight tests.

Source: A380_TLS_A350

But based on what Qatar Airways CEO Al Baker has told Leeham News "there might be an issue with the delivery as one engine is close to the allowed vibration level".

Source: A380_TLS_A350

Qatar might take an issue with that but apart from Qatar’s normal insistence on a perfect product to be presented at acceptance, there seems to be no real issues with the aircraft at present.

Source: A380_TLS_A350

Based on the article "Bjorn’s Corner: Boeing’s 787 and Airbus’ 350 programs, a snapshot" published in Leeham News.

Airbus will not continue within A350´s tier1 Alestis when it returns to profitability.

Airbus considers abandoning the shareholding of Alestis when this rescued Spanish tier1 returns to profitability.

Source: Jorge Guardia

"We entered in Alestis to give a more businesslike management. The idea was always clean it up, give it future and get out", said the Head of engineering for military aircraft at Airbus Defense & Space, Miguel Angel Morell.

The Airbus-Group Spanish manager avoided concrete deadlines alluding to that Alestis depends on Commercial division of Airbus.

"But I think that at the moment it is fully profitable, Airbus will have no intention to continue in Alestis," said Morell.

Airbus was bound to recue Alestis when it was in bankruptcy as a consequence of several  problems in the development of A350 belly fairing components. Later, Airbus even entered its shareholders.

The share capital of Alestis is currently set to 56.1 million euros with 3 shareholders; Airbus with 61,91% of the representation, the Spanish public society of industrial participations (SEPI)  with 24%, and Andalusian bank Unicaja with 14%.

Alestis should become "the company of reference for Airbus group", said Miguel Angel Morell.

Based on the article “Airbus se plantea salir del capital de Alestis cuando vuelva a ser rentable” published in Europa Sur.

Zodiac cabin equipment supplier in the list of A350 critical-suppliers

Airbus hit out at suppliers of cabin equipment last week, saying their failure to get to grips with chronic production delays was "unacceptable".

Fabrice Bregier, Airbus CEO did not single out any supplier but was responding to a question about French seat maker Zodiac, which has been in the spotlight over recent delays.

"I think the cabin equipment suppliers would do well to have an equivalent level of industrial maturity to that of aircraft manufacturers," he told a group of aerospace journalists.

"They are big industrial companies now, they are not small companies, so they must put in place measures to meet their obligations. It is becoming unacceptable."

Shares in Zodiac Aerospace slid last month after a profit warning due to delays in aircraft seat production.

Airbus and Boeing have both intervened by placing more people in Zodiac factories to help overcome the delays, and are insisting on vetting Zodiac seat sales as an ‘exception’ to their catalogs, industry sources have said.

Based on the article “Airbus chief lambasts cabin equipment makers over delays” published in Reuters.

$30 million is the cost of typical A350 spares-pool to support 10-12 aircraft.

Airbus, aiming to become a “major” player in A350 aftermarket support, is poised to announce its first long-term agreement with an A350 customer and is in talks with several more, a company executive reported.

The 12-year deal with a European operator is at the airline’s board-approval stage, according to Airbus Vice President-Services Solutions Pierre Yves Reville, and should be finalized soon.

“This is the first step into a very promising market,” Reville said. “We do intend to be one of the major players on A350” aftermarket support, he added

The deal is expected to be an Airbus Flight Hour Services (FHS) agreement, in which operators pay per flight hour for access to spares pools. Customized services are added based upon customer needs.

Airbus is talking with several other A350 customers, including Latam Airlines Group, Thai Airways, one other major European operator and 2 Chinese operators, Reville confirmed.

Spares pools are becoming more popular as airlines look to minimize parts-stocking costs, particularly with the newest-generation aircraft.

The increased technological sophistication and improved reliability means that complex components for models like the A350 are needed less often than similar parts on earlier-generation aircraft.

This makes them more expensive to stock, and more challenging to stock in the right locations within a single airline’s network.

The trend has operators turning to aftermarket services and logistics experts to provide on-demand pools for certain spares.

Airbus, which can team with its wholly owned parts and logistics subsidiary Satair on comprehensive-support packages, sees itself as in a prime spot to help meet the growing demand.

Airbus calculates that an airline needs 80-90 A350s before it can economically justify its own spares pool.

A typical A350 spares pool to support 10-12 aircraft can run about $30 million.

Airbus’s FHS offering and its more-comprehensive sibling, Total Support Package (TSP), have been slow to take off, but the manufacturer says interest is picking up, both among A350 customers and current customers looking to add in-service aircraft to their agreements.

Based on the article “Airbus Eyes Major Role In A350 Aftermarket Support; First Customer Imminent” published in Aviation Daily