Airbus to fly biggest A350 in battle of big twinjets

Airbus is preparing to stage the maiden flight of its largest twin-engined airplane, the A350-1000, stepping up a war for sales in a market segment dominated by US rival Boeing. Barring bad weather that could lead to a postponement, Thursday's roughly three-hour debut will add a new 366-seat member to the lightweight carbon-fibre A350 family, which entered service with the smaller A350-900 early last year. It is part of a game of leapfrog at the top of the market for twin-engined long-haul jets, as the dominant planemakers vie to outdo each other in size and efficiency in a category expected to generate $1t in orders over the next 20 years. It is also at the center of a new subsidy row between Europe and the United States at a time of protectionist pressures on both sides of the Atlantic. The WTO is expected to rule in coming days that Boeing received at least one strand of banned support for its response to the A350-1000, known as the 777X. Airbus said the A350-1000, a stretched version of the model which entered service last year, was scheduled to take off from its Toulouse base at around 0930 GMT on Thursday, returning there later, in an outing that marks the start of roughly a year of flight testing. The US says the plane and its smaller A350 sister model could only get off the drawing board thanks to damaging European subsidies, in a dispute likely to rumble on long after the A350-1000 enters service in the second half of 2017. The aircraft, which sells for $356m at list prices, is designed to compete with Boeing's 777-300ER, the most successful version of the US planemaker's popular 777 family.<br/>