Airbus A400M makes first test flight

The much anticipated Airbus A400M military transport plane made its first test flight successfully today.

Photo: Airbus A400M test flight

The maiden flight of the A400M took place at Seville, Spain. To say that the development of the A400M plane has not been withought trouble would be an understatement – it overshot its budget by several billion dollars. Airbus said that the company needs help from NATO states to finish the project. Some media reports said that a firther 5 billion euros are needed to complete the A400M project.

Airbus A400M maiden flight photo

We are awaiting more photos from Airbus – come back in a while to see more.

A six-man crew of two pilots and four engineers took off in the place successfully, to the applause and cheers of a large crowd and politicians. The maiden flight was expected to last three hours. Airbus has not released any information on the results of the test flight so far. We have a few photos from Reuters of the Airbus A400M test flight for you, for now as Airbus has not officially released any photos yet.

The second test flight of the A400M is scheduled for March 2010, and the third would take place in the coming summer.

The plane can fly as high as 40,000 feet (12000 meters) and each A400M will cost around 100 million euros. Airbus is stuck with the development of the A400M, while national governments which are its future customers are upset about the delays but have no option other than to wait. They need to replace their Hercules and Transall military transport planes with the A400M. Originally, the test flight was supposed to happen in 2008 and deliveries were supposed to begin in late 2009. At the current rate, deliveries of the A400M will begin only in 2012.

Nicknamed Grizzly, it the Airbus A400M has the most powerful turboprop engines in the Western world, and were developed by Rolls Royce, Safran and MTU Aero Engines. The propeller blades measure 5 meters tip-to-tip, and the blades on each wing rotate inwards in clock-wise, anti-clockwise fashion – originally pioneered by the Russian Tupolev Tu-95.

Airbus already has 180 orders for the plane.

The A400M is a four-engine turboprop aircraft – each engine produces as much as 11,000 horsepower. The military transporter can carry a maximum of 37 tonnes of troops and equipment, and is designed to land on short runways. Development of the turbo-prop engines faced several technical hurdles, which were the main reasons for the delay. With a 20-tonen payload, the A400M has a range of 6450 km, and with 30 tonnes a range of 4500 km.

Airbus also said that the A400M can be used as an air refuelling platform, for in-flight refuelling for all types of military aircraft, including fighters and helicopters.

Current customers of the Airbus A400M include Germany, France, Spain, UK, Turkey, Belgium and Luxembourg. Malaysia is an export customer, while South Africa cancelled its order following the delays.