Airbus A350-1000 Makes Its First Flight

• MSN059, the first of three A350-1000 development aircraft, took off from Toulouse-Blagnac Runway 32L at 10:42 local time on 24 November 2016 shadowed by a Dassault Falcon 20 chase plane and landed at 15:00 after 4 hours 18 minutes, flown by experimental test pilots Hugues van der Stichel and Frank Chapman with test-flight engineer Gerard Maisonneuve^[1][5]
• The crew explored handling and the flight envelope over south-western France with a chase plane filming; Airbus CEO Fabrice Bregier said "we have seen today the world's most modern and efficient passenger aircraft ... in action for the very first time"^[1]
• MSN059 would do performance, loads and braking; MSN071 braking, powerplant, systems and autopilot; MSN065, fitted with a cabin, would evaluate the cabin and air systems and fly "early long flights" and route proving; AIN summarised the plan as three prototypes flying 1,600 test hours^[1][4]
• Airbus planned a shorter campaign than the A350-900 because of its commonality, under one year for all three aircraft, leading to entry into service in the second half of 2017 with Qatar Airways, the largest customer with 37 on order; the programme then had 195 orders from 11 customers^[1]
• Mid-flight, Airbus chief test pilot Christophe Cail said "so far, so good; everything is working well" as the aircraft explored low-speed, high-speed and all flap configurations at 10,000 ft; AirlineGeeks listed a then-standard 366 seats and a 7,950 nm range for the type^[5]

Notable features

• Length 73.78 m, wingspan 64.75 m, maximum cabin width 5.71 m; about 7 m longer than the A350-900 (66.80 m)^[2][3]
• Two higher-thrust Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97 engines of 97,000 lbf^[3][5]
• Typical seating 369 in two classes (54 business, 315 economy) or 375-400 in three classes; maximum 480^[2][3]
• Modified wing trailing edge and new six-wheel main landing gear, in place of the A350-900's four-wheel bogies^[1][5]
• Range 9,100 nm (16,850 km) per Airbus today; cruise Mach 0.85; maximum take-off weight 324 t on the Airbus page (316-319 t weight variants in the airport-planning manual)^[2][3]