The first of a new breed of aircraft designed to fly for up to 22 hours to enable non-stop travel between Australia and the UK has completed its initial test flight.
Qantas, Australia’s largest airline, has ordered a total of 12 modified A350 aircraft that can make the flight without needing to refuel. The first of this batch has now completed a test flight in Toulouse, France, where it flew for three hours 43 minutes reaching an altitude of slightly above 41,000 feet. The aircraft was fitted with special flight test instrumentation and flown by a dedicated Airbus flight test crew.
The A350-1000ULR variant will be able to travel a distance of almost 10,000 nautical miles once fully deployed, enabling non-stop flights between Sydney, New York and London for the first time. This is made possible primarily by the integration into the aircraft structure of an additional rear-centre tank that increases its range by roughly 1,000 nautical miles.
A nautical mile is slightly longer than a standard...