TOULOUSE - Airbus has shifted final assembly of the first A350 XWB to the first quarter of 2012, with service entry of the new majority composite widebody with launch customer Qatar Airways to the first half of 2014, parent EADS has announced in its third quarter results.
Further, EADS has announced a €200 million charge on the program.
The company has cited the "maturity of the A350 XWB main components" as Airbus primary focus, though no other details about the reasons for the slip have been released yet.
Few details are expected to be released at this point by EADS, though a small contingent of journalists (including this one) is in Toulouse, site of the A350 final assembly line, for a comprehensive day of briefings that is expected to explain the current state of the program.
UPDATE 10:34 CET: Airbus A350 XWB program chief Didier Evrard says the start of assembly of the static test specimen (ES), the first A350 to be brought together in Toulouse, is paced by the complexity of the aircraft's center fuselage panels and fixed trailing edge, supplied by Spirit AeroSystems and GKN, respectively.
The second aircraft assembled in Toulouse will be MSN001, the first A350 to fly, followed by an identical flight test aircraft in MSN003, while the fatigue aircraft (EF1, 2 & 3) will come fourth and subsequently MSN002, which is the airframer's interior test bed.
Photo Credit Airbus
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