Airbus A350 Makes First Flight With Passengers

     For many years, the aircraft company Airbus has been making the biggest, most fuel efficient planes of the sky. Since their release of the A380, the world's largest airliner with 2 floors and room for up to 850 people, aviation nerds have wondered what is coming next. With Boeing's release of their new 787 Dreamliner, Airbus needed a plane to compete with Boeing. Their answer was the Airbus A350, a plane made of the newest space age materials very similar to the 787.

Airbus A350 test plane

       The A350, originally flown in 2013, is the first Airbus aircraft with wing structures and fuselage made of mostly carbon fiber, a material lighter and stronger than aluminum. The A350 was made to compete directly with Boeing's 787 and 777, both extremely popular jets in the airlines. The new aircraft made it's first flight with passengers yesterday, the 15 January 2015. During the flight, the reaction from the crowd was noticeable, everybody loved the new plane.

      The A350 has very impressive performance standards. Because of it's lightweight construction and powerful engines, it can takeoff and land in very little areas and it can climb at a massive rate of climb. So far, the A350 has over 800 orders upcoming. At a price of over 340 million dollars a piece, Airbus has a very large amount of money incoming.

Many Fear Reputation for Boeing's New 787 After Many Problems

    For over 75 years Boeing has been one of the top producers of American made planes. With a variety of planes from the WWII B-17 to Boeing's new unmanned helicopters, Boeing is the company to go to for any aviation needs. Although almost every airliner that they've produced in the "700" series was a hit, Boeing's newest high-tech airliner seems more like a rotten egg.
   

    Boeing's newest airliner, the 787, took it's first flight on the 15th of December, 2009. Everyone at Boeing and airline owners thought Boeing's newest creation would be the most fuel efficient, high-tech plane to ever come from Boeing. The airline owners definitely felt confident when Boeing received over 1,000 orders for their new $297,000,000 jet. Although Boeing received so many orders initially, airliners have really slowed interest in the high tech, composite jet. The total number of 787 orders this year is only 18, while Boeing's most popular jet, the 737 has 663 orders scheduled for this year.

     Although it is the most technologically advanced airliner ever created, the 787 has had many flaws that keep appearing and slowing the progress of Boeing. One recent problem that has come up 3 times now is the Lithium-Ion battery that is used to power the 787. Since the 787 relies on so much technology and computers, the 787 has to have a battery 10 times larger than Boeing's jumbo jet, the 777. In three different flights, the batteries have started smoking and caught on fire. Luckily, every time this happened, the planes were near airports for an emergency landing. Another major problem was discovered this March. Boeing found hairline cracks in the 787 wing. Since the 787 is made of composite materials like fiberglass and carbon fiber, this was very scary to Boeing engineers, if the wing cracks continued to grow, the wing could separate from the plane in flight. After a few weeks, Boeing reinforced all cracked areas and haven't found any cracks since.


     Even though Boeing's new jet has some problems, hopefully in the future Boeing can fix all of the problems to make the new jet what it was meant to be; the most advanced airliner ever created.