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First Airbus A350 XWB Delivered, Will Start Service in January
jones_supa writes The wait is finally over for aviation aficionados wanting to book a flight aboard the Airbus A350 XWB. Qatar Airways, the global launch customer of the plane, accepted delivery of their first A350 of 80 in order, during a ceremony at Airbus' headquarters in Toulouse, France, on Monday morning. This particular A350-900 will enter regular commercial service in January, operating daily flights between its Hamad International Airport hub in Doha, Qatar and Frankfurt, Germany. There are three different iterations of A350 XWB being built: the A350-800, the A350-900 and the A350-1000, which seat 270, 314 and 350 passengers, respectively, in three-class seating. The "XWB" in the name means "extra wide body." The A350 is the first Airbus with both fuselage and wing structures made primarily of carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer. Curious what it was like to be on the Tuesday delivery flight? Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren was onboard that flight and chronicled the landmark trip in photographs.
Hopefully the A350 can make up for the anemic A380 sales
The A380 is really huge. A lot of the long-haul flights that I've been on in the last couple of years haven't been full, even when they're the one flight of the day between two points and are on a plane with half of the capacity of the A380. It's a very economical plane to fly if you can fill it up, but if it's likely to be under half full then it's very expensive. The big-planes, infrequently model doesn't really work with the hub-and-spokes model popular in the USA, because it either needs more coordination with short-haul spoke routes, or layovers (and the cost of near-airport hotels means that these can often make it cheaper to book a different airline's flight).
I flew on the 787 (LHR - IAH, both directions) for the first time this year and it was such a massive improvement over earlier models that I actually enjoyed flying for the first time in ages. Even in the cheap seats, there was lots of legroom, lots of overhead space (so you didn't feel cramped), the air pressure stayed good for the entire flight, the seats reclined comfortably without invading someone else's space. I managed to get more uninterrupted work done on the outbound flight than any other time over the surrounding few months. I'm really looking forward to airlines using similar craft on all long-haul routes.
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I'm afraid the airline chooses the seat pitch, seats and cabin layouts - its not the 787 giving you most of your experience there, its the airline.
It's like processor performance ratings: AMD, er, Airbus PR800 -> 270, PR900 -> 314, and PR1000 -> 350. No doubt Boeing will roll out its own bCOMP index to rate its aircraft: Take the number of passengers, multiply by the number of engines, divide by the average delivery delay, multiply by the number of consonants in "Rolls-Royce Trent 1000", and you have the bCOMP index, which oddly enough works out slightly higher than the Airbus Performance Rating in all categories. I hear that Airbus are planning to overclock their engines in order to get higher numbers than Boeing for their next release...
The reason is Chinese superstition. 8 is a lucky number in Chinese, because the sign for 8 shows two triangles pointing up. By the way, 4 is considered an unlucky number in China because it sounds similar to the word for death. Since most customers for both Airbus and Boeing are assumed to be in East Asia, their marketing departments put eights into their newest products wherever they can. The newest version of the 747 is called 747-8.
Do you spot a pattern?
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
Pedanticism strikes, there is no such plane as the A-350 nor the A-380. The aircraft is called the A350 and the A380. Airbus doesn't use hyphens in its main product name.
Why does Qatar need 80 new planes, let alone 80 planes? The land mass of Qatar is 4,468 sq miles. That's about 67 miles on a side if you make is a square. If you evenly place these 80 new planes along the border of Qatar, there would be one every 3.3 miles. If these planes were taxiing around the border at the standard 30mph, and you stood there, one would pass you every 6.6 minutes.
I see. Border patrol.
I was referring to the regional trains. Cross-country takes longer, e.g. Stockholm to Malmö is 4-5 hours. Last time I took that route (something like 6-7 months ago), they'd just started including wifi with a paid ticket. I can't recall whether or not it was unlimited. The free wifi on the regional trains just started a couple of months ago.
For me, Stockholm to Malmö or Copenhagen takes about the same amount of time by train or by plane. I'm about a 20 minute subway ride from Stockholm Central, I only need to be there maybe 10 minutes before departure, and the other end of the journey is the central station in the destination city. Whereas Arlanda airport is about 90 minutes away for me, I have to be there at least an hour before takeoff, and it's 30 to 45 minutes from Kastrup into the downtown area of either city, which pretty well cancels out any speed advantage from flying.
And when I go by train, I don't have to worry about my bag being overweight or containing anything I'm not allowed to take on an aircraft.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.