HOW WE FLY
The Airbus A350 is a hit with passengers – and the people lucky enough to fly it.
Why do passengers and pilots so love the A350? PHIL HEARD finds out
THERE ARE PLENTY of technical advances that make the Airbus A350-1000 a great flying machine. But Captain Evan Summerfield, who’s flown for Cathay Pacific for 25 years and brought back the airline’s first A350-1000 from the Airbus factory in Toulouse, reckons that at least some of the best features are those that we can all enjoy.
Let’s start with noise. ‘ The A350 is noticeably quieter during the cruise,’ he says. ‘I particularly notice it when coming into land through horrible weather: it’s raining and you’re being battered around a bit on approach, but on the flight deck you can talk at normal levels.’
This is not just good for conversational clarity but it’s also less fatiguing, particularly in tandem with the lower cabin altitude – the effective height above sea level simulated in the plane. ‘Because the fuselage is made from a carbon-fibre composite plastic rather than aluminium, the cabin can be pressurised more, so the cabin altitude is lower,’ Summerfield says – and that helps with jet lag, too.
But now let’s move to the flight deck. First among the features here is the HUD, or ‘head-up display’. Once the preserve of military planes, this is a transparent pull- down screen in front of the pilots which allows them to see ahead through the window but also be fed information and instrument readings. ‘It’s a fantastic tool for situational awareness and makes it easier to operate the aircraft in a dynamic environment, particularly during take- off and landing,’ says Summerfield.
Another feature popular with Airbus pilots is the meal table in the cockpit. This is possible because the Airbus comes with a side-stick to operate the flight controls, enabling a fold- out table to be where a conventional control column would be. ‘ You can write on it, put a meal tray on it – and if you flip it over, there’s a full keyboard to enter data into the flight computers,’ notes Summerfield.
This sense of flexibility extends to the aircraft’s performance in the air. It’s the fastest aircraft in the passenger fleet, but also performs well at slow speeds thanks to the wing design. ‘ The combination opens up possibilities for us; we can carry heavier payloads into airports with shorter runways because we need less distance to stop,’ says Summerfield.