By Tim Hepher <\/p>\n
PARIS, Aug 18 (Reuters) – Airbus has tentatively set the first flight of its delayed \u200cA350F freighter for the third week of September \u200cas it tries to loosen Boeing’s grip on airborne trade, industry \u200bsources said on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
The schedule, which could slip into early October, leaves the European planemaker with a finely balanced certification timeline as it aims to complete flight testing \u200cand achieve the first \u2060delivery to customers before the end of next year. <\/p>\n
Flight trials usually take 12 to \u206015 months, industry sources say. <\/p>\n
An Airbus spokesperson said it had nothing to add to its most recent predictions of \u200ba maiden \u200bflight before the end \u200bof this year, followed \u200cby first delivery in the second half of 2027. <\/p>\n
Originally launched in 2021 with a goal of entering service four years later, the dedicated freighter version of Airbus’s A350 long-haul jet family aims to penetrate a corner of \u200cthe aircraft market long dominated \u200bby Boeing. <\/p>\n
Airbus has sold 107 of \u200bthe lightweight composite \u200bA350F cargo planes, compared with 38 of \u200ca smaller and older A330F \u200bmodel. <\/p>\n
Reuters reported in \u200bMay that Airbus was facing delays in cargo doors built by Airbus in Spain for the new \u200bfreighter. <\/p>\n
Aviation publication \u200cLeeham News reported this month that A350F deliveries \u200bcould slip into 2028. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Tim HepherEditing by \u200bSusan Fenton and David Goodman) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Tim Hepher PARIS, Aug 18 (Reuters) – Airbus has tentatively set the first flight of its delayed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[90,1166,14487,19398],"class_list":["post-38703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-airbus","tag-airbus","tag-boeing","tag-first-flight","tag-industry-sources"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}