Airbus A350: the composite long-haul twinjet

The Airbus A350 is a long-range, twin-engine widebody airliner built by Airbus. It was developed to compete with Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, and airlines use it on long-haul international routes that once needed a larger, four-engine aircraft. The baseline A350-900 first flew on 14 June 2013², and the family is powered by two Rolls-Royce Trent XWB turbofans¹.

Design and development

Airbus’s original plan was a reworked version of the A330, but Singapore Airlines and the lessor ILFC pushed the company toward a clean-sheet design instead. The programme was redesignated the A350 XWB, for “Extra Wide Body,” in July 2006, and Airbus’s board gave industrial launch approval for the A350-800, -900 and -1000 variants in December 2006. Development cost roughly $10-15 billion by various estimates², well above the programme’s original budget.

The airframe is 53% composite material, mostly carbon-fibre-reinforced polymer, with 19% aluminium, 14% titanium, 6% steel and the rest other materials. The wider fuselage lets airlines fit nine seats across in economy class, against eight across on the older A330, and the cockpit uses six 38 cm liquid-crystal display screens. Airbus designed the type to be more than 10% more fuel-efficient than the aircraft it replaced, and a 2017 Performance Improvement Package cut fuel burn by a further 1.4-1.6%².

Specifications

Figures below describe the baseline A350-900. The aircraft is 66.8 m long with a wingspan of 64.75 m, and it has a maximum take-off weight of 283,000 kg. Airbus gives it a range of about 15,750 km¹ and a cruise speed of Mach 0.85, about 912 km/h. A typical three-class cabin seats 325 passengers. A 2018 list price put the A350-900 at about $317.4 million. By August 2026, Airbus had delivered 734 of the 1,624 A350s ordered².

Variants

The larger A350-1000 stretches the fuselage to 73.8 m and raises maximum take-off weight to 322,000 kg, giving it a longer range of about 16,670 km¹ and a typical seating range of 350 to 410 passengers. Airbus also planned a smaller A350-800, but cancelled it as airlines favoured the larger variants. A freighter derivative, the A350F, is in development as a further member of the family², alongside the passenger variants already in service.

Operators and service

Qatar Airways was the launch customer, putting the A350-900 into service on the Doha-Frankfurt route on 15 January 2015. By August 2026 the type flew with 38 airlines, and Singapore Airlines was the largest operator with 65 aircraft, while Turkish Airlines held the largest order with 110 aircraft. Across the fleet, the A350 has flown more than 15 million hours on over 1,400 routes and carried more than 600 million passengers².

In August 2021, Qatar Airways grounded part of its A350 fleet over paint that had degraded unusually fast, arguing it put lightning protection over the wing fuel tanks at risk. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency found the paint flaws did not affect the aircraft’s structure or create other risks, and other airlines, including Finnair, Cathay Pacific, Etihad, Lufthansa and Air France, had reported similar paint damage since 2016. Qatar Airways and Airbus settled the dispute on confidential terms on 1 February 2023².

Safety record

The A350’s first hull-loss accident came on 2 January 2024, when a Japan Airlines A350-900 collided on landing at Tokyo Haneda Airport with a Japan Coast Guard aircraft that had entered the runway without clearance. The coast guard aircraft’s five crew members died, but all 379 people aboard the A350 survived, with 17 injured, after evacuating before the burning aircraft was destroyed³. Outside that accident, the global A350 fleet has recorded no fatalities².

Similar aircraft

• Boeing 787 Dreamliner: the composite widebody twinjet the A350 was designed to answer².
• Boeing 777: Boeing’s larger long-haul twinjet family, which the A350-1000 competes against on the biggest long-haul routes.