Airbus sticks to A350 design, to build 13 a month

TOULOUSE, France, June 4 (Reuters) - Airbus on Monday dismissed reports it plans a radical change to the way it intends to build the A350 as it disclosed a production schedule for the future mid-sized, long-haul aircraft.

Air Transport World Online reported recently that the European planemaker planned to shift to an all-composite barrel design for the fuselage to help reduce cost.

That would mean bowing to a manufacturing formula chosen by Boeing for its 787 Dreamliner, which is due to enter service in 2008 and which for the time being is dominating the market for a new generation of fuel-saving airliner.

But Gordon McConnell, chief engineer for the A350, said Airbus was sticking with plans to build the jet out of frames made of similar lightweight composite materials.

"We think it's a better solution for the design of the aeroplane. It gives us better trade-off of weight versus cost and it allows us to optimise the design," McConnell told reporters during a briefing.

Airbus, which is in the midst of a restructuring to compensate for a weak dollar that favours Boeing, plans to deliver its first A350 in 2013, five years behind the 787 following false starts in the design process.

It aims to "freeze" the design, or prevent any further changes in specifications, in October 2008.

Airbus said it would manufacture 13 A350s a month by the third year of production, 2016, representing its highest production rate for a wide-body aircraft.

Under Boeing's barrel-production method, the 787 fuselage is built by interweaving modern, lightweight fibres to forge fuselage sections in a solid piece without the use of joints.

Airbus plans to build each fuselage section out of four panels, while making them as long as possible to reduce the number of joints.

Doing so allows each panel to be designed to cope with the stresses on that part of the aircraft, McConnell said.

Airbus is cutting 10,000 jobs and streamlining a fragmented production process spread across four European member countries -- France, Germany, Britain and Spain -- but denies that the use of panels is designed to preserve the separation of tasks between individual plants.

The A350 will be assembled in Toulouse, France, and much of the production of individual work will be outsourced.

The A350 and 787 are competing in a market which Airbus estimates at 5,300 planes over 20 years. The U.S. manufacturer has taken a firm lead with 567 of its 787 range sold against 13 solid orders and 142 tentative commitments for the A350.