A350XWB, the Plane Airbus Did Not Want To Build, Makes Maiden Flight 135
McGruber writes "The BBC reports that the Airbus A350XWB (extra wide body) has made its first flight. Like the Boeing 787, the A350 offers airlines the chance to combine long-range services with improved fuel efficiency. The A350's fuselage is made of carbon fibre reinforced plastic, while many other parts of the aircraft use titanium and advanced alloys to save weight. It also has state-of-the-art aerodynamics, and engine manufacturer Rolls Royce has produced a new custom-designed power unit. Airbus claims that all of this means the A350 will use 25% less fuel than the current generation of equivalent aircraft. It also points out that noise and emissions will be well below current limits."
Re: At that price (Score:2, Informative)
I would hope so! Aircraft last a long time due to the careful maintenance.
Re:At that price (Score:5, Informative)
Theoretically, yes. In practice, airliners can easily make into into their 20s before reaching their practical end of life, longer if they're not cycled a lot. Many don't survive that long in 1st tier airlines, though.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
Boeing announced the Boeing 787 right after Airbus committed to the A380 - Airbus was going for the VLA market, which Boeing had dominated since they launched the Boeing 747 in the 70s as they had no effective competition in that particular market segment.
Once Airbus committed themselves to the VLA segment, Boeing committed itself to the smaller 250 seat segment, in which it already had an aging product in the Boeing 767 - sales of which were rapidly tailing off, and customers were demanding something more efficient.
Airbus responded by announcing a package of updates to their A330 airliner, but customer demand was poor - a lot of large customers wanted an all new fuselage design (the Airbus A330 and A340, both circa 1990 in vintage, used the same fuselage as the A300, which preceded them by 20 years), and carbon fiber as a primary structural component, so Airbus went back to the drawing board and came up with the A350XWB.
Its an aircraft that "Airbus didnt want to build" in the same vein as Boeing "didnt want to build" the Boeing 787, as that program only came about after customers outright rejected Boeings Sonic Cruiser concept in the years leading up to the 787s program launch - the 787 uses many of the same technologies (the carbon fiber barrels for the fuselage), and is a direct follow on from a prior program that was rejected by customers.
Interestingly enough, the Airbus A330, which customers didn't want an updated model of, has sold well over 500 aircraft since that "rejection". You never can tell....
Re:Great! (Score:4, Informative)
Title is very misleading. The A350 XWB was designed after the original A350 (modernized A330, basically) drew lukewarm support, at best. Now it's pretty popular.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
Airbus wasn't caught off guard, and the A380 was not an ego measure - Boeings new 747 proposals were being rejected by customers at the time as they wanted an all new airframe design which would encompass modern aerodynamic efficiency increases over the 747s 1960s vintage. Go and google the 747-500, -600 and -700 concepts as they all existed on paper. Airbus responded to the market demands by supplying a design for an all new VLA airframe.
Airbus basically have the VLA market now, as Boeings response, the 747-800, has seen lukewarm reception at best. Airbus thought they could hold their own in the 200 - 350 passenger market segments with the A330 and A340 models, and nterestingy enough the A330 has infact held its own, and continues to sell even as the 787 becomes available.
Where Airbus did falter was in the top end of the 200 - 350 market, covered by the A340. This was being beaten resoundedly by the Boeing 777, which was launched a decade earlier than the Boeing 787. Airbus are countering the top end of the market with the A350XWB, which will cover the larger 787 variants (-9 and -10) while also covering most of the 777 range as well.
Airbus is confident enough in the A330 that it doesn't see the need to immediately replace it like for like.
Re:At that price (Score:5, Informative)
These planes will still be flying in the 2030s.
Since these planes won't suffer from metal fatigue like planes made out of aluminum, that means that they'll last longer?
Metal aircraft don't necessarily have to suffer so badly from metal fatigue that they have to be replaced inside of 15-20 years. Fatigue depends on usage patterns and there are 747 still flying after 30 years of regular use and with good maintenance should be able to last at least the better part of another decade. USAF engineering studies project that their B-52 fleet would not reach the fatigue limits of it's wing structure until the 2040s but keep in mind these B-52s do not get flow as hard as the 747. The B-52s that are now in service left the factory in the mid 1960s. An American airforce veteran I met a few years ago told me that there are actually cases of the third generation of soldiers from a military family flying B-52s. Dunno if that's true but theoretically it sure could be. Just about the only criticism you can throw at the B-52 is that it could do with an upgrade to more modern fuel efficient engines which Boeing estimated would increase it's already impressive loiter capability by 46%.
Composites are not magic (Score:5, Informative)
Metal fatigue in airliners is driven by several factors: humidity of the air in which they are operated (for example planes the spend their lives in Hawaii suffer more than planes that operate mostly in the southwest of the US) the number of pressurization cycles (the fuselage acts like a balloon.... the structure inflates a bit when pressurized and relaxes when below approx 8000 ft... therefore planes that spend most of their hours on long flights last longer than those that have fewer flight hours but made many short flights) plus the usual mechanical (bending)stresses any plane would experience.
Composites are not immune to stress and failure... they are just different. Composites are less sensitive to moisture (which means dreamliners can have more comfortable moister cabin air without contributing to structural wear) they handle the pressurization cycles better (so planes like the dreamliner can pressurize their cabins more to make passengers more comfortable at altitude) and so on. Composites also have an interesting thermal reaction: they soften a bit in heat (making them slightly less-suited to hot weather ... a possible issue on the ground in hot places, but not at altitude where it's cold even over the equator) but they actually get stronger as they get colder (so composite planes are actually stronger and safer at high altitudes). Composites are made of various fibers embedded in various types of plastics (resins) and their strength comes from the fibers as long as the plastic holds those fibers together properly... but the resins are much more sensitive to heat and particularly sunlight than metal. How the resins will hold-up after 20+ years of high-altitude exposure to the sun (higher UV etc) is a bit of a question... materials science people can simulate this stuff, but nothing beats real-world exposure and real-world operating conditions. If those resins age poorly and become crumbly (and less sticky, therefore less able to hold the fibers in place) then these airframes will have shorter service lives.... but they will still probably win-out because of all the monetary savings that their increased efficiencies provide during those service lives
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, Airbus has been continually improving the A330-200 model, which has proved to be VERY popular with many airlines (in fact, Airbus was actually reluctant to build the A330-200 because it feared it would affect A340 sales). The original state range was 6,400 nautical miles, and thanks to the availability of increased mean takeoff weight (MTOW) variants, the A330-200 can now fly nearly 7,200 nautical miles, which means flights as far as San Francisco to Hong Kong non-stop becomes possible.
The A350XWB-900 carries the same payload as the 777-200ER, but has over 20% lower fuel cost and can fly 8,100 nautical miles, 400 more than the 777-200ER. Small wonder why there's a long list of orders--a list that could grow even longer at the Paris Air Show.
Re:"Plane Airbus Did Not Want To Build" (Score:5, Informative)
Right. And the reason they went ahead is that its better to have your own product cannibalizing sales of your already-established products than it is for your competitor to be doing it while you are standing still.
Re:"Plane Airbus Did Not Want To Build" (Score:4, Informative)
They needed the A350. The 777 [wikipedia.org] has been beating the A340 [wikipedia.org] into a bloody pulp in the market. 1452 orders since 1995 vs 377 orders since 1993. The A340 is a 4-engine plane vs. the 777's 2-engines, and fewer engines is more efficient.
It's not that Airbus didn't want to do the A350. The original A350 they proposed would've been a slightly upgraded A330 and straight competitor to the 787 (low- to high-200s seating in 3-class arrangement). The airlines didn't want that. They wanted something which could compete with the 777 (low- to high-300s seating in 3-class arrangement), and used the 787's launch as an opportunity to complain and get Airbus to build it for them. So Airbus scrapped their original A350 plans and designed something a little larger like the airlines wanted. The A350 will have high-200s to mid-300s seating, competing with the larger-sized 787 models, and the smaller 777 models.
Re:At that price (Score:4, Informative)