A350 XWB – EIS 2013

Airbus has yet again made a change to the A350 and this time they seemed to have followed boeing’s lead and gone in for a CFRP fues. unlike the last partial attempt at CFRP,Ali mixed frame which was launched at Farnborough this year –

Airbus to Spend $12 Billion to Develop A350 Jet, People Say
2006-11-03 11:54 (New York)

By Andrea Rothman
Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) — Airbus SAS plans to increase spending by
20 percent to $12 billion to develop its A350 jet, a long-range
plane that would be made mainly of lightweight carbon fiber, said
two people with direct knowledge of the proposal.
The European planemaker, trailing Boeing Co. in new orders
this year, will present designs for the A350 XWB to parent company
European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co. on Nov. 7, said the people
who declined to be identified before an announcement.
The plane marks Airbus’s sixth attempt to come up with a rival
to Boeing’s 787, which has won 402 orders and may help Boeing
overtake Airbus as the world’s largest maker of commercial planes.
Airbus has struggled to develop its A380 superjumbo, now two years
behind schedule and forecast to generate operating losses of 4.8
billion euros ($6.1 billion) by 2010.
”They really don’t have a choice about doing it, if they want
to be competitive with Boeing over the long term,” said Phil
Finnegan, an analyst at Teal Group, a consulting company in
Fairfax, Virginia. ”The big issue is, do they have the engineering
talent to deal with the launch of the A350 as they’re dealing with
the problems of the A380?”
Airbus said in July the A350 would cost $10 billion and have
wings made from carbon fiber. The new concept would be made 50
percent from carbon fiber to reduce weight and save on fuel,
airlines’ biggest expense after labor, the people said.
Boeing’s plane, known as the Dreamliner, is 50 percent out of
carbon fiber by weight, and 20 percent more fuel efficient than
planes it replaces, according to Boeing.

Behind Boeing

The new A350 XWB wouldn’t enter service until at least 2013, a
year later than previously planned and five years after the 787 is
expected to fly. Making a fuselage from carbon fiber composites
will also make the plane more costly to develop, requiring new
equipment and technology, the people said.
In July, Airbus said it had scrapped earlier plans for an A350
based on an existing model and aimed to offer by October an all-new
plane that would cost $10 billion to develop.
Emirates, the largest Arab airline, is among carriers waiting
for Airbus’s response to Boeing’s 787 before placing an order in
for long-range planes. Emirates said in July it may buy as many 100
planes in the 300-seat category from Boeing or Airbus. The order
might be worth as much as $20 billion.
Boeing’s 787 cost the planemaker and partners $10 billion to
develop, according to Paul Nisbet, an analyst at JSA Research in
Newport, Rhode Island. The A380’s development cost has risen to
$13.5 billion. Airbus expects to take 1.1 billion euros in charges
this year because of penalty payments to airlines for late delivery
and anticipated losses on some contract.

Original Plan

The A350 XWB would have between 270 and 350 seats, depending
on the model, and a range of 8,500 nautical miles, the people said.
That compares with 210 to 330 seats on the 787 and a range of up to
8,800 nautical miles. The largest version of the new Airbus plane
would compete with Boeing’s larger, two-engine 777 which has been
winning orders from the European planemaker’s less fuel-efficient,
four engine A340 series.
Airbus’s original plan for the A350 called for a model based
on the A330-200. The company was hoping to save money as it
struggled to finish the A380. The plane announced in July was to
have a wing made largely of lightweight carbon fiber composite
materials. The new version will have a fuselage almost entirely of
lightweight materials.
Made from a petroleum-based product filled with epoxy resin,
carbon fiber composites are four times stronger than aluminum and
weigh 40 percent less. Airbus has gradually built up its use of
composites. About 25 percent of the A380 is made of composites, up
from 15 percent in the A340-600, which entered service in 2002.

Software Glitch

When Boeing first introduced the largely composite 787, many
airlines were somewhat reticent, said Hans Weber, chief executive
of San Diego-based consulting company Tecop International, because
carbon fiber makes damage more difficult to recognize and repair.
”As time goes by, two things have happened,” said Weber.
”Boeing has been working to demonstrate these are misplaced fears.
And more important, every time another airline orders the 787, it
weakens the fear of conservative airlines. And so the technical and
market arguments for an aluminum fuselage on the A350, which even
two years ago made sense, have been weakened.”
Airbus has received firm orders for only 159 A380s and
customers, angered by the delays, have threatened to cancel some
contracts. Under current plans, Toulouse, France-based Airbus will
deliver only 84 of the planes by 2010, compared with the 159
aircraft estimated as recently as June.
Airbus ran into difficulties with the A380 because its German
design offices had different design software from the French design
teams. EADS Co-Chief Executives Tom Enders and Louis Gallois, who
is now also Airbus CEO, said Oct. 3 that future planes will be
designed with the same software.

–With reporting from James Gunsalus in Seattle. Editor: Stets
(csc)

Source – bloomberg , SpI

Guess its 12 Billion dollars in development and nearly 5-6 years later then the 787 !! Still think it is a step in the right direction for Airbus though and they can possibly get some of the fragmenting orders out of the 777 customers however Like EK in my opinion the 10 abreast 777 still looks very cost effective even if boeing decides to do nothing to the -300ER when the XWB-1000 arrives 7-8 years from now !

Slowly but Surely the XWB is aquiring 787 Technology , First the all new design , then the Increased Cabin humidity and pressure , Now the CFRP fues. . We can expect Bleedless engines and electrical Generators to also come along !! Wonder what Leahy has to say to all this considering that in his own words the 787 was a cheap Plastic Chinese copy of the A330 🙂 , Maybe Airbus will give some of the XWB work to China and then the XWB could be a cheap……….;)