A 350-1000 first flight
 

First flight today at Toulouse (France) of the Airbus A350-1000
Nothing to report apart from nice pictures.
Test Pilots : Frank Chapman (UK) and Hugues van der Stichel (France)
Both of them have never been airline pilots by the way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDY7oPUti8I

Lucky them!

Didn't Frank fly for Monarch for several years ?

You're right Dave.

He is also a display pilot for the Shuttleworth collection at Old Warden and flies everything from their wood and fabric "Edwardians" to WW2 warbirds.

A nicely proportioned nice looking aeroplane, hopefully the old 'IF' adage holds true as its good for the UK if Airbus has a successful long hauler

A nicely proportioned nice looking aeroplane, hopefully the old 'IF' adage holds true as its good for the UK if Airbus has a successful long hauler

The usual question, do they even have any possibility of using, what looks like, parachutes? I seem to recall there was a "escape hatch" in some test airplanes, but in this one?

Escape.

I think you can see the cut-out position on landing. If so it's fitted into the fwd cargo door as usual. There would be no reason not to re-fit it.

Lovely air-to-air photos now available, but the live coverage was dire. There was a blurry phone-quality video on Periscope and the local French TV station had a live video on Facebook ( for the 60% who use that ) both of which were linked 'officially' from Airbus. At least when Boeing promotes an event you can just go to their website and watch it.

... completed THE Test Pilot Course in France. Please.

And yes, acknowledge - a brief stay at Monarch.

Clearly he left when he got the 7-year itch. :O

Airbus now have a far superior aircraft range to Boeing. The only thing that will keep Boeing going are two simple resaons:

Commonality with current fleets
A lack of available airbus delivery slots

My quote is not an airbus v boeing typical rant! Just a common sense observation.

I think there are different approaches between A and B with A being in general terms-ire the 'model range' more inventive and innovative than B . But B have a slot of strength expecially in the WB market as the 777 is such a good platform. Also in Boeings favour is the 787 which is probably the most advanced airliner design around.

I think the big 'if' for Boeing is that should the 777-9X turn out to be a dog (a stretch too far) like the 737-9 then they really do have a problem because A will eat their lunch in the narrow body world for years because the 737 well past its sell by date . However if the stretch triple is a good performer then B will continue to have strong position in the long haul world.

Don't recall a TP called Chapman at Farnborough '90 - '96 and I knew all the EFS/EFW pilots; in any case EFW moved to Boscombe Down in '94.
I suspect he was a Bedford pilot rather than Farnborough.

His bio here

http://www.aerosociety.com/Assets/Do...3/Bios_703.pdf

says he had a spell at Farnborough during his 16 years in the RAF (1980-1996), so not necessarily post-1990

I was stationed at Farnborough from 1974 untill the end of MOD Test Flying in '94, finaly leaving in 2008.

The mystery deepens ...

I believe he spent quite a lot of time as an exchange officer in the USAF mainly on the F16 avionics upgrade. He has played a major role in the testing of the A350 to date, the success of which reflects very well on him. Nice to see him get the first flight of the A350-1000.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he wasn't at Farnborough, just that I don't recall the name as ATC and EFS always had a great social rapport attending each other's p1ss ups etc.
There could be several reasons; as I said he may have been detached to Bedford, alternatively he may have been flying a desk with DRA/DERA/Qinetiq (the guy who flew me in a Hunter had to do one of these tours so I know it happens) or maybe it's just my memory!!