The A350-1000, the newest member of Airbus’ widebody family, has embarked on a three-week demonstration tour of the Middle East and Asia-Pacific region.

The demonstration tour follows the completion of a successful flight test campaign, which lasted less than one year and culminated in joint EASA and FAA type certifications. The A350-1000 tour comes ahead of the first customer delivery to Qatar Airways in the coming weeks.

During the tour, the A350-1000 flight test aircraft (MSN065) will visit 12 destinations, travelling over 30,000 nautical miles/55,500 kilometres, with stops in Doha, Muscat, Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei, Hanoi, Singapore, Bangkok, Sydney, Auckland, Tokyo and Manila.

The aircraft will stop for several days in Singapore, where it will be on static display from 6 to 8 February at the Singapore Airshow 2018. The FINN team hopes to capture some video footage on this stop so watch this space.

MSN065

MSN065 is one of three Airbus A350-1000 test aircraft and is equipped with a fully functional cabin (40 business class, 36 economy plus class and 219 comfort economy class seats). The demonstration flights will be operated by Airbus flight test crews.

A statement from Airbus said: “The A350-1000 is the latest member of the A350 XWB Family, showing a high level of commonality with the A350-900, with 95% common systems part numbers and the same Type Rating. As well as having a longer fuselage to accommodate 40 more passengers than the A350-900 (in a typical three-class configuration), the A350-1000 also features a modified wing trailing-edge, new six-wheel main landing gears and more powerful Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97 engines.”

To date, 11 customers from five continents have placed orders for a total of 169 A350-1000s.