Good news from Toulouse, with the first Airbus A330neo landing successfully – completing a 4 hour 13 minute test flight.
The A330-900 in flight – Image, Airbus
The A330-900 completing its first flight – Image, Airbus
With the first sortie done and dusted, we now move onto the longer term testing. Three planes will be joining the A330neo test programme – with two -900 (the payload optimised version) and one -800 (the range optimised version).
Fabrice Brégier, Airbus COO and President of Airbus Commercial Aircraft on completion of the flight stated
“Today’s first flight of the A330neo marks yet another milestone along the Airbus journey of continuous innovation.” He added: “My congratulations and thanks go to all the teams who have contributed to make today’s flight happen, and to our customers for choosing this very efficient and capable aircraft to give them market advantage. We look forward to a successful flight test campaign and entry into service of the A330neo in 2018.”
Airbus have slated the test programme is set for 1,100 flight hours for the test campaign of the A330-900, with an additional 300 hours for A330-800 programme. Two A330-900 and one A330-800 will form the test fleet for the A330neo launch. One of the A330-900s will also be fully outfitted with an Airspace by Airbus cabin to validate the designs.
In terms of seating, each will be able to carry 10 more passengers in a 3-Class layout – with an A330-900 holding up to 287 passengers, and a A330-800 with 257 passengers.
As we can see from the images, there are two big changes in the A330neo.
Looking up at the A330-900 with the new Rolls Royce Trent Engines and new wings with Sharklets – Image, Airbus
Firstly, the big Rolls Royce Trent 7000 engines, but also the longer wing which features new sharklets to match – a departure from the winglet devices that used on the A330 currently.
The Airbus A330neo family currently holds 212 firm orders. TAP Portugal will launch the A330-900neo (which currently has a total of 206 orders in the book), whilst Hawaiian Airlines will launch the A330-800neo (who have a total of six orders on the book – and currently the only carrier to order the type).
Entry into service is still slated for Mid-2018 with TAP Portugal.
And I’m looking forward to spending time aboard the completed planes.
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