The Airbus A350F has taken off for its first flight, marking a major milestone for the aircraft manufacturer after five years of detailed planning, component and demonstrator testing.
Departing from the Airbus base in Toulouse, France at 10:30am CET, the A350F will conduct taxiing, flight, landing and technical tests before returning to the airport.
“It really represents the culmination of years of activity, going back to the launch and even before that. We had to convince many internal stakeholders, including finance, to support the investment. It has been a huge team effort, bringing together engineering, programme teams, production teams, marketing and many others across Airbus,” Crawford Hamilton, Head of Freighter Marketing at Airbus, said. “Along the way, we’ve also done a lot of work to raise awareness and build relationships within the freight industry. For those closely involved, you know it’s a village – a small community within the much larger aviation world. It’s a great group of people, and meeting them, hearing their stories and learning about their experiences has been incredibly rewarding.”
The Airbus A350F is a new-generation large freighter designed specifically for the demands of modern air cargo, rather than being a passenger aircraft converted later in its life. Based on the A350 family, it combines the platform’s aerodynamics, advanced materials and Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97 engines with a fuselage and cargo systems optimised for freight. Airbus says the aircraft will carry up to 111 tonnes of payload and have a range of up to 4,700 nautical miles, making it capable of serving long-haul international freight markets.
It is intended to bring a modern aircraft platform into a freighter market that has increasingly relied heavily on converted passenger aircraft and older purpose-built designs. The transition towards newer aircraft is being driven partly by the age of the existing fleet and partly by the capabilities offered by modern freighter designs, such as their lower fuel burn and CO2 emissions compared to previous generation aircraft.
The A350F’s design includes a dedicated crew area behind the flight deck, with large windows on either side. This is particularly relevant for operations where accompanying personnel may be seated in the area. The aircraft’s ventilation arrangement is another feature giving the crew access to fresh air rather than simply relying on recirculated air from the cargo compartment. This means that the people accompanying live animals are separated from the cargo environment in terms of air circulation, an important consideration when transporting over long distances.
“The A350F presents unique dimensions due to the freighter’s specific fuselage configuration – which is equivalent to an A350-900 forward fuselage [length] mated to an A350-1000 rear fuselage [length] and A350-1000 wings. In turn, this creates a new aerodynamic model which affects flight control, while the new geometry for the landing gear affects ground maneuvering,” Laurent Bussiere, Lead Flight Test Engineer for the A350F programme, said. “It’s not an A350-1000 and it’s not an A350-900, but rather it’s between both. So we need to look at the behavior of the whole system with this unique model. That’s why we go into the development simulator to prepare for the first flight and the subsequent 400flight-hour flight test campaign.”
More to follow.
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Author: Edward Hardy
