TAP order for a dozen of A350 could be cancelled if the privatization plan collapses.

"The new aircraft are ordered, these aircraft have a much higher market value than was paid, the payment are recovered ... often, a way to maintain a company is to look for some added value for the future," said the President of TAP when asked if he has a plan-B in case of privatization collapse.

On presentation of 2014 data (TAP has registered losses of 85.1 million euros), Fernando Pinto acknowledged, without quantifying, that the company has already begun to pay for A350s ordered to Airbus 10 years ago.

If the privatization plan goes ahead, TAP will receive the first of 5 A350-900 airplanes in Q1/2017.

For the President of TAP, the strike called by the Civil Aviation Pilots' Union (SPAC) only a month before the due date for privatization of the airline "brings an enormous concern to anyone who is interested in".

Based on the article “Fernando Pinto admite vender A350 se privatizaçao falhar” published in Diário Económico. 

A350 high reliability. Only 2 punctual issues impacting operations between Doha-Frankfurt.

With the caveat that we are only looking at 2 aircraft flying 2 daily rotations between Doha-Frankfurt, it seems that dispatch reliability for the initial period is around 98%.

Source: Fraviation

There has been only 2 issues impacting the operational A350 so far: a hydraulic hose that broke some time ago and a high lift issue that needed a spare part to be flown in beginning of April.

Source: photographing_aircraft

It seems that the A350 is not beset by the myriad of system software issues that plagued the initial operation of A380 and 787.

Source: Tomasz Szykulski

The A350 was effectively a further refinement of the A380 systems and Airbus has therefore been able to focus on system maturity before delivery instead of the exhaustive debugging of functionality that plagued Boeing for 787 and Airbus for A380.

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

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.