Airbus Delivers First A350-900 Widebody to Qatar Airways
- December 22, 2014, 8:59 AM
Airbus delivered the first production A350-900 to Qatar Airways on Monday during a ceremony at the manufacturer’s production facility in Toulouse, France. Plans call for the airplane—the first of 43 A350-900s and 37 A350-1000s on order by Qatar—to fly the airline’s Doha-Frankfurt route starting next month. The state-owned airline placed its A350 order, which it valued at $16 billion, at the 2007 Paris Air Show.
“The arrival of this new generation of aircraft type represents a moment of great symbolic national pride for the State of Qatar, and I know its delivery will be met with excitement at its new home, Hamad International Airport, which was built for advanced aircraft types such as this,” Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker. Qatar Airways has seen rapid growth during its 17 years of operation, to the point where today it flies 142 aircraft to 145 destinations across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, North America and South America.
The A350-900 gained European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) certification on September 30 and U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval on November 12. The respective awards came after a fleet of five test aircraft accumulated more than 2,600 flight test hours since first flight on June 14, 2013. The family of aircraft, which also includes the A350-1000 and A350-800, had drawn firm orders for 778 airplanes from 41 customers by the end of November.
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