Airbus A350-900

The Airbus A350 XWB is a family of long-range, wide-body airliners developed by Airbus. The first A350 design proposed by Airbus in 2004, in response to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, would have been a development of the A330 with composite wings and new engines. As market support was inadequate, in 2006 Airbus switched to a clean-sheet “XWB” (eXtra Wide Body) design, powered by Rolls-Royce Trent XWB turbofan engines. The prototype first flew on 14 June 2013 from Toulouse in France. Type certification from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) was received in September 2014 and certification from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) two months later. The A350 XWB is the first Airbus mostly made of carbon fibre reinforced polymer. It has a new fuselage designed around a nine-abreast economy cross-section, up from the eight-abreast A330/A340. It has a common type rating with the A330. The A350 XWB has two variants: The A350-900 typically carries 300 to 350 passengers over a 15,000 kilometres (8,100 nautical miles) range and has a 280-ton (617,300-pound) maximum take-off weight (MTOW); the longer A350-1000 accommodates 350 to 410 passengers, has a maximum range of 16,100 km (8,700 nmi) and a 319 t (703,200 lb) MTOW, and is supported by two 6-wheel main landing gear trucks (the -900 has four).