A350 delay

Airbus has just announced, at the half year earnings briefing, that another three months of delay for the A350-900 EIS will be added to the schedule, not affecting the first flight as the problem is due to a blockage in the drilling station for the wings. It is clear that OEMs are having further issues with their schedules as before with A380 and B787. Airplane development is a highly complicated program on which many small projects are really being done for the very first time, making it very difficult to estimate the actual dates.


If experienced OEMs are having issues with their plannings, the planning for C919 shall be affected, for sure, by this problems in a higher level, I'm expecting news about this in 2013.


I will update the calendar (notice that was started not using the original plannings):

Q4 2012:                    A320 Sharklet EIS
December 2012:         CS100 first flight
H1 2013:                    A350-900 first flight
end 2013:                   CS100 EIS
H1 H2 2014:               A350-900 EIS
2014:                          C919 first flight
October 2015:            A320NEO EIS
mid 2016:                   A350-800 EIS
2016:                          C919 first flight
2017:                          A350-1000 EIS
2017:                          B737 MAX EIS