In what should surprise no-one, the new Airbus A350XWB is going to be delayed further.
A three month delay has been announced, with the predicted entry into service now pushed into the second half of 2014.
The A350 was already suffering a year of delays as it goes from concept, to a real aircraft.
The delay has been caused by a production problem involving drilling holes in the plane’s wings, and how the preparation for a new automated drilling process took longer than expected – causing production schedules to be delayed by several weeks.
The cost to EADS (Airbus’s parent company) is a cool €124 million ($152 million) charge with further delays to the A350 programme would lead to higher rates of charges being made.
The Airbus A350XWB has had an slightly troubled history, with it originally a redesign of an A330, to an entirely new fuselage, wing, nose, and all other components, with different versions that have caused relaunches along the way.
Parts for the first body of MSN001 (the fire flyable test aircraft) have recently arrived at Toulouse assembly is beginning, but there still a long way to go to first flight.
Like Airbus proved with A380 and Boeing proved again with the 787, designing a new aircraft is fraught with problems and delays. It seems though that these lessons – whilst sometimes learned – have a fiscal impact.
