Airbus A350F first flight sets up 2027 certification push

The aircraft, registered F-WXLD and called MSN700 by Airbus, took off from Toulouse for a four-hour, 10-minute flight that reached 25,000 feet with a five-person crew, including three test engineers. It is the first of two test aircraft. Airbus said the second, MSN701, is in an advanced stage of final assembly and will go to the paint shop in the next few weeks.

The crew flew with special flight-test instrumentation to verify basic airworthiness, handling qualities and that basic systems performed as predicted. Airbus plans a test campaign of more than nine months and more than 400 flight hours before formal certification work in 2027, with deliveries expected in the second half of the year. EASA will lead certification, and Airbus is targeting simultaneous approval from the FAA under the Amendment 27 safety regulations, with certification aimed at the middle of next year.

FlightRadar24 said close to a million people tracked the flight.

What the freighter offers

Airbus quotes a payload of 111 metric tons and a main-deck cargo door 175 inches wide, which it describes as the largest in its class. At full payload the aircraft is projected to reach about 4,700 nautical miles, enough for Hong Kong to Anchorage. The forward fuselage is A350-900 length mated to an A350-1000 rear fuselage and wings, and the cargo door sits behind the wing so airlines can load the main deck and two lower holds at once. Airbus says the aircraft will offer up to 40 percent lower fuel burn and carbon emissions than the aircraft it is designed to replace.

Leeham News, cited by Yahoo Finance, put the A350F and Boeing's 777-8F within 3 percent of each other on fuel burn and cash operating costs, with both providing a 20 percent efficiency improvement over previous-generation cargo jets. The A350F's advantage is timing, because it reaches the market first.

A new A350F is expected to be worth $197m to $198m, according to aviation advisory firm IBA, as cited by Air Cargo News.

Delays and next steps

Airbus pushed back the A350F's entry into service to the second half of 2027 from an earlier expectation of 2026, Air Cargo News reported. The flight-test programme has faced delays from supply chain issues, staffing shortages and challenges with production of the main-deck cargo door, Yahoo Finance reported. Some analysts expect first revenue service in 2028 instead.

Cathay Pacific, which has eight A350F aircraft on order, expects a delay of around six months to its deliveries, chief operations and service delivery officer Alex McGowan said at the airline's half-year results briefing. He said the airline is confident the slippage affects only the "first few aircraft" and that airframers will catch up as the order book progresses. Airbus chief executive Guillaume Faury said on the company's second-quarter call that deliveries should start next year, with "delivery of aircraft in rather significant numbers, as soon as 2028."

Boeing's 777-8F has also slipped, from 2027 to 2028, because of flight-testing delays on the 777-9 passenger aircraft.

Order book

Airbus has secured orders for 115 A350F aircraft from at least 14 customers, including 34 orders so far in 2026, according to Air Cargo News. Airbus said on the day of the first flight that it had recorded 115 orders. Earlier reports put the figure lower: Yahoo Finance reported 103 orders from 14 customers on 29 September, and an ad-hoc-news analysis on 21 August cited 107 firm orders from the same number of customers.

Cathay Pacific holds eight of the orders: six placed in December 2023 and two more added earlier this year. Airbus has also received 20 orders from Atlas Air, one of the biggest air freight operators and previously a loyal Boeing customer, Bloomberg reported.

Bloomberg reported that demand for air freight has picked up as shippers avoid risky waters such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, where ships have been delayed or damaged.