Airbus has embarked on early preparation for A350F certification, intending to implement lessons drawn from the approval process for the A321XLR.

The airframer is aiming to secure European Union Aviation Safety Agency certification for the freighter in the second quarter of 2027.

But Airbus head of widebody programme development Guillaume Vuillermoz, speaking during a briefing on the cargo jet, said that – even though the A350F is based on the A350-1000 – the certification path is not necessarily straightforward.

The A321XLR, which was designed with a large integrated fuel tank to achieve longer range, had to meet new EASA criteria for such a modification.

“What we’ve learned is that it’s quite tricky to certify a derivative of an existing certified platform,” says Vuillermoz. “The certification authorities are much more demanding than they used to be a decade ago, let’s say.

“For that reason, one of the lessons was to start the certification process much earlier than we used to do.”

He states that Airbus brought certification preparatory work for the A350F forward by about a year.

Vuillermoz adds that maturity is another essential consideration, and the certification baseline for the A350F will be aligned with the latest EASA amendment for large civil aircraft.

Certification of the A350-1000 towards the end of 2017, he says, was based on amendment 13. But this baseline has since progressed to amendment 27.

Vuillermoz says that upgrading the certification baseline for the A350F is a “key effort” but he says the airframer “thinks it’s worth doing” because it “won’t have to negotiate” to obtain specific approvals.