Yes, it will certainly be a great, and very welcome, event when the A400M first gets airborne. I hope that it will very soon be flying regularly, enough at the very least to clear enough of the flight envelope to be able to transit to Toulouse for the rest of the programme - followed by the other FTP aircraft of course.
While the partner countries' DefMins sort out some at least of the outstanding lumps in the porridge of the contract, there will also be a lot of internal bargaining about responsibility for the FADEC programming standards foul-up, which will be just as fierce, no doubt. This seems to have cost the programme a good 18 months of delay: if so, the FTP would have been well on the way to completion by now.
Fingers really need to be more accurately pointed, not just at "Airbus" in general, but towards what the French Senate report called the "headless" engine consortium, apart from any other difficulties in "upgrading" what was CASA's capabilities in so short a time.Strenuous efforts were already being taken to sort out the airframe side well before the FADEC problem surfaced.
I, for one, wish the aircraft and its crew a successful start to the FTP, and the whole set-up a safe emergence from all the turbulence.