The first sub-assemblies for MSN001, the first Airbus A350-900, are scheduled to arrive in Toulouse a year from now in the third quarter of 2011 ahead of final assembly.

The program has eaten significant margin already, having pushed the start of final assembly of MSN001 from second quarter 2011 to the third quarter 2011, with first flight to follow in mid-2012. That event will kick off a 12-month – down from 15-month – five aircraft, 2,600h flight test program to certify the new twin-jet.

The initial slip of three months, which maintains an entry into service date with Qatar Airways in mid-2013, was attributed by Airbus to four primary areas related to the sizing of the majority composite jetliner.

[A350 program manager Didier] Evrard says the decision to push back fabrication was partly driven by
the fact that Airbus is working in so many new areas with carbonfibre,
so “you only have one chance. Normally you could commit to production
with a global finite element model, but the process for development of
structure in composite is really different [to metal] – you cannot
start machining the part and then improve the design.

“The four areas affected comprised the airframe sizing, the wing-root joint, the fuselage’s electric structural network (ESN – which helps the conductivity of the carbonfibre fuselage) and the fuselage damage tolerance. While the first two issues have been resolved and the fixes approved, validation of the solutions for the latter two is ongoing but progressing well, says Airbus.

However, with three years to go before it carries passengers, a new report from Bernstein Research is pegging A350 entry into service in 2014. The report by Air Transport World, does not elaborate on the reasons for the further slip, but states that the European airframer will hand over just eight of the aircraft in 2014.

Asked to comment, an Airbus spokesperson told ATW, “We don’t have any basis to confirm the data in the Bernstein report.” Airbus has reassured the market in the past that the program is on track for a 2013 first delivery.

With Airbus maintaining its 2013 target, one A350 supplier source tells FlightBlogger: “Airbus is in more schedule trouble than Boeing was with the 787.” First Section 15 composite panel fabrication is expected to begin in September or October at Spirit AeroSystems in Kinston, North Carolina, adds the source, before the parts are later shipped to St. Nazaire for center fuselage build up in the first quarter of 2011.

Despite a potential slip, fabrication of MSN001 has been ongoing since December 2009, and structural supplier Aerolia, which builds the upper panel of the Section 12, which will contain the A350’s forward doors, completed fabrication in July along with the St. Nazaire-manufactured aluminum lithium lower sill of Section 11 which makes up the flight deck structure in the forward fuselage.

Rendering Credit Airbus & Photo Credit Aerolia

With its south west swing continuing a day after undergoing aerodynamic testing at Edwards Air Force Base, ZA001 spent Wednesday at Roswell, New Mexico for wet runway trials. The 13001ft-long ungrooved runway is far more challenging than nearby Edwards Air Force Base and has hosted previous flight test aircraft for certification trials before. ZA001 returned to Edwards on Wednesday evening and will spend Thursday conducting Velocity minimum unstick testing.

Boeing issued a short statement on the ‘Package A’ Trent 1000 engine failure in Derby:

Boeing is actively participating in the investigation into this event with Rolls-Royce. There has been no impact on the flight test program to date as a result of this event.

While the statement reiterates what Rolls-Royce said earlier in the week about the investigation, Boeing places a significant qualifier on any impact to 787 flight test with the worlds “to date“. Package B Trent 1000 engines have yet to fly on ZA004, which is currently undergoing flight loads survey in Victorville, California.

An investigation will yield whether or not the failure, still believed to have been uncontained, was a one-off event or a systemic event, though Rolls-Royce’s comment suggesting “a modification is already in place for later engines” points to an issue with the early Trent 1000s.

Yep, it’s true AvGeeks, Microsoft is back with a new version of its 28-year old flight simluator. Due to the recession, Flight Simulator had been crashing on a friend’s couch in Redmond since getting laid off in January 2009, and is reinventing itself as Flight for the new version of the venerable software. Let’s hope this version can run on my Mac too. Also, I’m pretty sure Microsoft’s new branding was lifted directly from us. No word on a release date or how badly this version will eat my CPU.

Tip of the hat to Peter Sanders

Dusting off 747-400s after their stay in the desert is a good sign of a recovering global economy. The long-range, high capacity jumbo’s return to service with airlines like Cathay Pacific, British Airways and United Airlines signals a resurgence of strong demand on a diverse array of routes. While it is no longer the most efficient aircraft in its class with the larger A380 or slightly smaller 777-300ER filling its previous role, the need for capacity growth is outweighing the reintroduction of the less efficient type.

Though, with each individual carrier making decisions based on increases in demand, Bloomberg’s report on capacity increases introduces this variable:

“Everybody is getting very excited about passenger and cargo volumes coming back, but there’s a great temptation to add too much capacity,” said Chris Tarry, an independent airline analyst and strategy consultant in London who has followed the industry for almost three decades. “What may be rational fleet decisions for individual airlines can add up to a problem for the industry when taken together.”

This trend of bringing aircraft out of the desert along with production output rising on nearly every commercial assembly line at Boeing and Airbus, commercial aerospace, by all outward appearances, is a solid barometer of the way toward a global economic recovery. Yet, like all good cause and effect equations, is commercial aviation a leading or trailing indicator of global growth? It’s like dividing by zero, it will make you cross eyed if you think about it too long.

Unleashed pent up demand from lessors came to the fore at Farnborough with lessors signing up for billions of dollars worth of aircraft, but for Richard Aboulafia – who has a pesky habit of hitting the nail on the head – the order bonanza may be shortsighted. Here’s reason two of six the parade might be premature:

2. There’s a degree of separation between the air travel market and the economy. Passenger and cargo traffic are doing great, and airlines are making money. Yet today’s traffic numbers are now completely disconnected from, and way better than, the economic indicators that typically drive them. Stock prices, GDP growth, inflation (or even deflation), bond rates, retail sales, housing inventories, employment, and consumer confidence numbers in the US and Europe all show continuing uncertainty.

The numbers across the world’s largest economies are decidedly uneven: Germany is growing like gangbusters, but the US and Japan are sputtering and Chinese factory output slowed for the fifth month straight. Economic indicators are all going in different directions, so what’s an airline to do? Too many aircraft in the marketplace could wreak long-term havoc on airlines, lessors and manufacturers alike. Let’s just hope the painful lessons in capacity discipline didn’t get parked in the desert too.

In early August, a production standard ‘Package A’ Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine suffered an engine failure while on the test stand at the company’s Derby, UK facility. The ‘Package A’ engines do not incorporate upgrades planned for the ‘Package B’ engines, which will bring the specific fuel consumption target within 1% of planned spec.

Rolls-Royce says: “We have had an engine failure on a test bed in Derby. We are now investigating in detail and have made good progress in understanding the issue. We do not anticipate any impact on the programme.”

Industry sources say the failure, which is believed to have been uncontained, occurred in early August on a production ‘Package A’ model Trent 1000 engine that will power early 787-8 aircraft for launch customer All Nippon Airways, and has been initially traced to the single-stage intermediate pressure (IP) turbine. The IP turbine in conjunction with the IP compressor supplies the electrical power for the 787’s systems.

Boeing has yet to comment on the event, but it appears that 787 flight testing will not be impacted. ZA001 through ZA004 are all powered by the ‘Package A’ Trent 1000s. ZA004 will be outfitted with the ‘Package B’ engines later in the flight test program.

Boeing 787 Dreamliner N787BA ZA001, originally uploaded by flightblogger.

Boeing’s lead 787 flight test aircraft, ZA001, is bound for Edwards Air Force Base in southern California on Monday to begin a phase in the flight test campaign that will see the new composite jetliner conduct some of its most arduous flying.

The aircraft is slated to depart Boeing Field for Edwards around 8:00 AM PT for the hour and forty-five minute flight to California. While at Edwards, ZA001 will conduct velocity minimum unstick testing (Vmu) to establish the minimum flying speeds for the 787 at various weights and flap settings.

For these tests, ZA001 will rotate as soon as the aircraft’s elevators become aerodynamically effective, pitching the 787’s nose upward, striking the tail – affixed with a specialized tail dragger – on the runway. Flight test crews will establish the minimum performance for the aircraft, as the aircraft picks up speed and the aircraft begins to fly.

Travel Day: CPH-EWR-DCA – Back on the Grid, originally uploaded by flightblogger.

Ready for my second of two legs back to Washington, DC following a restful week on vacation in Copenhagen. It was a much needed break, but I’m excited about being back. My ride to DC this afternoon is a Bombardier Dash 8-Q400 Next Gen (N208WQ) just slightly smaller than the 757-200 (N34131) that took me across the pond to Newark from Kastrup this morning. Off and running Monday morning, lots of things to catch up on.