Airbus's secret to making only seven of its ultra long-haul jets

(June 1): Airbus SE has seen widespread popularity for its newest A350 long-haul aircraft. But only one carrier, Singapore Airlines, has found the need for an ultra long-range version of the A350 that can fly almost 10,000 miles, from New York City to Southeast Asia—nonstop.

Airbus completed the first test flight of the ULR version on April 23 as part of a certification programme for the plane. It’s building only seven of them right now, for delivery this year—a tiny number when one considers the economies of scale inherent to airplane manufacturing. The secret? Well, it turns out that it’s not that much trouble to soup up this hot rod.

The ULR doesn’t require additional fuel tanks over the standard A350-900, but instead uses additional space already available in the existing tanks to carry an extra 6,340 gallons of fuel to take its range to 9,700 nautical miles, or 1,600 more than the standard -900. Airbus said the plane can stay aloft for more than 20 hours at a time.

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