Airbus gets a new freighter – and its giant door – into the air for the first time

Airbus has successfully flown a new freighter based on its A350 passenger jet.

The first A350F yesterday rolled down the runway at Airbus HQ in Toulouse, France, bringing the aerospace giant closer to delivering a high-capacity freighter.

Airbus already makes two freighters, based on its A330 and A321 planes. In the past, it also made custom freighters that featured a bulbous enclosure atop a fuselage adapted from an A330 or A300. Airbus named the planes “Beluga” because they looked a little like a whale.

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The BelugaST, based on the A300, mostly did duty carrying Airbus’ own cargo between factories. The company later operated a commercial cargo service using the planes but discontinued that in 2024.

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Airbus built five of the larger BelugaXL, which is based on the A330F. The last entered service in 2024 and Airbus intends to fly them for 30 years. The XL’s design allows it to carry large components of the A350.

The new A350F can carry a payload of 109 tonnes, compared to 64 tonnes for the A330F. The new plane also has longer range, and a bigger door.

As Airbus explained in May, the 4.3-metre door is big enough that it’s possible to slot a turbofan engine straight into the plane. The aerospace giant also suggests the giant door makes it “perfectly suited to accommodate high-value, time-sensitive cargo critical to the modern economy, from high-density computer servers to large-scale electronic chip manufacturing machines.”

There’s your IT angle, dear reader.

The plane’s capacity is a little less than rival Boeing’s 777F, but Airbus claims the A350F is more efficient and therefore cheaper to run.

The first A350F flew for four hours and ten minutes, climbing to 25,000 feet. Airbus has almost finished making a second model, which will be needed as it embarks on the hundreds of test flights required to certify the new plane.

Airbus says customers have already ordered 115 A350Fs.

While colossal and impressive, the A350F can’t handle the truly enormous loads carried by 747 freighters or the Antonov An124, both of which boast a nose cargo door that can swing open to allow very long cargoes to be slotted inside. The BelugaXL also features such a nose.

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The An124 and the 747 are both getting long in the tooth, leading the European Defence Agency to conduct a project called the European System for Outsized Cargo Airlift (ESOCA) to investigate alternatives.

The agency recently summarized the findings of ESOCA by suggesting it considers “deeply modernising the Antonov 124 fleet, or/and developing a new European aircraft to replace C-17s, as well as other viable alternatives.” ®