Maiden Flight for A321 Long range

First Flight Test

The 31st of January, into Airbus' facilities at Hamburg Finkenwerder airport, had been the first flight session for latest Airbus aircraft and officially named A321LR. The new long-range single-aisle jet performed a 2 hours 36 minutes test. The crew onboard tested many metrics. In a first time, they checked if aircraft flight central, engines and main systems including fight envelop protection could handle high and low speed. Plus crew tested maximum altitude for the new aircraft that is 39000 feet to know if the engines and cabin could handle the pressurization of high altitude.

Copyright©Airbus

"The A321LR will allow our customers to perform flights of up to 4,000 nm, allowing them to open new routes – for example transatlantic — and conquer new markets,” said Klaus Roewe, head of the program

Aircraft Features

This new plane use ACF configuration (Air Cabin Flex) as basis and structure for the cabin but it has a new door configuration that allows operators to put in the aircraft 240 passengers. The configuration of this new A321LR increase MTOW to 97 tonnes and his range is up to 4000 nautical miles (=7400km). Plus a third Additional Center fuel Tank (ACT) and a general fuel consumption that will decrease of 20% by 2020.

The A321neo family represent today a total of 1900 orders for 50 different customers. The new aircraft from Airbus represent approximately 80% of the market share which make this plane a true aircraft of choice. Next steps for the long-range single-aisle jet are, first 100hours of flight test including TransAtlantic mission. The goal of this test sessions is to have EASA and FAA certifications for Q2 2018 to make the aircraft entry into service for Q4 2018.

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