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Airbus’ A350 XWB MSN3 development aircraft with a team of 48 Airbus specialists has completed cold weather trials at Iqaluit. Temperatures reached down to -28C. The scope of the trials included: APU and engine starts after cold soak; verifying system behaviour; low-speed taxi; and rejected takeoffs. It also performed a local flight as planned.
This latest phase of the development test program comes only days after MSN3’s completion of the high altitude tests in Bolivia. Since the A350 XWB’s first flight with MSN1 on June 14, 2013, over 900 flight test hours have been performed in close to 200 test flights by both MSN1 and MSN3. In total the A350 XWB flight test campaign will accumulate around 2,500 flight hours with the fleet of five aircraft. The rigorous flight testing will lead to the certification of the A350-900 by the European EASA and US FAA airworthiness authorities, prior to entry into service in Q4 2014.
