Airbus To Showcase A350-1000 Aircraft In Asia

Airbus says it will debut the newly-certified A350-1000 at the Singapore Air show this week as part of a three-week demonstration tour across Asia-Pacific and the Middle-East.
The Airbus Marketing Director, Mr Francois Obe, in a statement Tuesday said Airbus was scheduled to deliver the first production aircraft to launch customer Qatar Airways within the next two weeks.
Obe said Singapore marked a three-day interlude for test aircraft MSN065, which would continue to Bangkok, Sydney, Auckland, Tokoyo and Manilla having visited Doha, Muscat, Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei and Hanoi.
He said the better-than-expected performance of the big twinjet puts allowed it to take advantage of an ‘unprecedented’ period of traffic growth in the Asia-Pacific region.
According to him, over the next two decades, Airbus predicts some 4,000 wide bodies will be needed in the region, representing around 50 per cent of global twinjet demand.
The airbus director said the Rolls-Royce Trent XWB97-powered aircraft was meeting or beating performance targets.
He explained that empty weight was on specification at 129,000kg, while noise was slightly better than expected with a 16.5 EPNdB (noise decibels) margin to ICAO Chapter 4 standards.
“This is to allow the aircraft to meet the stringent QC0.5/1 rules for night time operations at London Heathrow a global yardstick for noise sensitive arrivals and departures.
“In recent testing, the aircraft also showed better-than-expected airfield performance with the ability to take off at more than 5.3 tonnes higher weights in hot weather conditions.
“It also takes 7.2 tonnes greater weights than forecast out of obstacle limited runways and 3.8 tonnes better out of high attitude airfields.
“Airbus, meanwhile has delivered 142 of the smaller A350-900 and said dispatch reliability of that variant was 99.3 per cent”, he said.