The Airbus A350 is a long-range, wide-body twin-engine jet airliner developed and produced by Airbus. The first A350 design proposed by Airbus in 2004, in response to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, would have been a development of the A330 with composite wings and new engines. As market support was inadequate, in 2006, Airbus switched to a clean-sheet "XWB" (eXtra Wide Body) design, powered by two Rolls-Royce Trent XWB turbofan engines.
The proposed A350 was a new design, including a wider fuselage cross-section, allowing seating arrangements ranging from an eight-abreast low-density premium economy layout to a ten-abreast high-density seating configuration for a maximum seating capacity of 440–475 depending on variant. The A330 and previous iterations of the A350 would only be able to accommodate a maximum of eight seats per row. The 787 is typically configured for nine seats per row.[25] The 777 accommodates nine or ten seats per row, with more than half of recent 777s being configured in a ten-abreast layout that will come standard on the 777X. The A350 cabin is 12.7 cm (5.0 in) wider at the eye level of a seated passenger than the 787's cabin,[27] and 28 cm (11 in) narrower than the Boeing 777's cabin (see the Wide-body aircraft comparison of cabin widths and seating). All A350 passenger models have a range of at least 8,000 nmi (14,816 km). The redesigned composite fuselage allows for higher cabin pressure and humidity, and lower maintenance costs.
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