Aviation International News senior correspondent Ian Goold has been involved in aerospace since 1964 and in aviation media for more than 40 years. He enjoyed a 20-year career at Flight International magazine, where he was latterly air-transport editor before turning freelance in 1993. A winner of the European Regions Airline Association Hank McGonagle award for excellence in aerospace journalism and a Royal Aeronautical Society Aerospace Journalist of the Year global&nbsp;award, he has edited or contributed to aerospace and aviation magazines, special publications, and websites in Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. Ian entered aerospace as an apprentice at the British Aircraft Corporation at Brooklands (Weybridge), where he worked on production and final assembly lines of the Vickers Super VC10, and BAC One-Eleven , and manufacture of Concorde major sub-assemblies. He subsequently graduated from the BAC Design Training School to work in the airframe structures drawing office (including design of international future projects, such as the Panavia Tornado multi-role combat aircraft) before joining Flight International in 1973. Apart from years of reading aircraft magazines and books, his first direct contact with aviation media had come during the early 1970s when he was involved at Brooklands with the Weybridge Man-powered Aircraft Group, which designed and built the tenth aircraft to fly under purely human power. As an aviation journalist, he has worked at more than&nbsp; 50 of the major biennial&nbsp;global and regional international aerospace industry shows at Le Bourget, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai (having missed attending only one "Farnborough" since 1960), plus innumerable NBAA, HAI, (U.S.) AOPA, and EBACE Conventions and ERA Assemblies. His favourite aircraft is the Hawker Hunter, of which – as a schoolboy – he heard hundreds make their first flights from Dunsfold, where also on September 24, 2013, he saw the penultimate landing of the VC10 (happily involving an example of which he had witnessed the maiden takeoff in 1970) a day before the last example made the design's final flight (unless, of course....).

Senior correspondent

Ian Goold

Airbus is working hard to complete A350 flight testing, which it hopes to close by the end of next month in preparation for formal European Aviation Safety Agency airworthiness approval in September. Principal remaining work involves long-range flights now under way following a maximum-energy rejected takeoff (MERTO) demonstration at Istres Air Force Base in France on July 19. By July 22, the five A350 test aircraft had logged more than 2,250 hours during about 540 flights involving more than 1,380 takeoff/landing cycles.


Airbus is conducting the route-proving campaign with A350-900 MSN 005, which by early July had accumulated almost 36 flight hours in its first six flights since taking to the air on June 20. One of two A350 flight-test aircraft equipped with an airline cabin interior and sporting only a “light” flight-test equipment fit, MSN 005 also performs operability checks, crew training and extended twin-engine operations.


According to flight and integration tests senior vice president Fernando Alonso, route proving has proved “quite a logistics exercise” that will require several flight crews positioned around the world. The aircraft will undertake 26 flights totaling some 200 hours’ flying representative of airline operations, including high-airfield performance, auto-landing trials, and airport turnaround and handling services. Plans called for MSN 005 to visit Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, Qatar, Russia, and South Africa, with the campaign including a shuttle of four Hong Kong-Singapore round trips separated by 90-minute turnarounds.


Although Alonso acknowledges that A350 test flights have involved operating at “way over” normal maximum takeoff and landing weights, the MERTO demonstration with MSN 001 used more representative values, or around 275 metric tons at 160- to 170 knots. Typically, such tests require an aircraft to come to a halt from maximum V1 speed at maximum takeoff weight using 90-percent worn wheel brakes, no reverse thrust and with no damage to the aircraft from any landing gear fires that might break out within five minutes.


An earlier high-energy rejected takeoff (not necessarily at maximum weight) had cleared the A350 for initial long-flight demonstrations. “[MERTO] involves a combination of weight and speed,” said Alonso. “We set the [demonstration] speed finally just before brake release [when we know] the actual aircraft weight.”


Airbus expects to retain A350s MSNs 001 and 002 and to refurbish the remaining three test airframes for customers. Post-certification work includes aircraft configuration testing for launch customer Qatar Airways, which should receive the aircraft “towards the end of the year.”

A350 Testing Approaches Conclusion With Route Proving 

Airbus A350s have flown more than 2,250 hours during 540 flights. 

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