Airbus flew its first A350F freighter prototype on 29 September, opening a nine-month test and certification campaign that the manufacturer aims to close with simultaneous EASA and FAA approval by the middle of next year.

The aircraft, MSN700 carrying the test registration F-WXLD, departed Toulouse at 10:31 local time for a maiden sortie of roughly four hours, with a planned return to the same base. Airbus live-streamed the departure. A Dassault Falcon flew chase.

The flight crew — two pilots and three test engineers — completed final cross checks of the computer systems and the flight plan before departure. According to the livestream, the aircraft was expected to operate in the area around Toulouse, Bordeaux and the Bay of Biscay under arrangements agreed with air traffic control on 28 September.

The A350F is Airbus's first clean-sheet freighter challenge to Boeing's dominance in the widebody cargo market in decades, and the program carries a backlog of 115 firm orders from at least 14 customers. Certification is targeted under the latest Amendment 27 safety regulations, with both European and US approvals sought in parallel.

Julien Puyou, Airbus head of widebody programmes, outlined the engineering choices that separate the freighter from the passenger A350 on which it is based. "To build the A350 freighter we took the A350-1000 and we shortened it a bit in the front part and we put a cargo door behind the wing," he said.

The shortened forward fuselage was a deliberate aerodynamic decision. Puyou said the changes were made to "optimise the balance of the aircraft in the air and so to optimise its performance — that's why we made the nose shorter".

The main deck cargo door, at 175 inches wide, is "the largest in the industry", according to Puyou. Its placement aft of the wing serves an operational purpose: Airbus positioned it there to optimise loading. Puyou said the company wanted operators to load the three cargo areas — the main deck and the two lower deck compartments — simultaneously, so that cargo handlers are "completely unconstrained on their operations".

A second A350F has already entered the final assembly line cycle and is due to fly for the first time later this year, Airbus confirmed. That aircraft will join MSN700 on the certification campaign, which the manufacturer laid out as a nine-month program leading to the targeted mid-2027 approval — a timeline Airbus first stated earlier this year when the cargo door arrived and the first flight was set for the third quarter.

For now, the A350F exists as exactly one flying prototype and one airframe in final assembly, set against a backlog that now stands at 115 aircraft across at least 14 customers. The gap between those two figures is the work ahead: Airbus must convert a four-hour first sortie into certified, deliverable freighters on a schedule it has committed to holding for its launch customers.