December 11, 200916 yr From Aviation Week A400M Takes Flight Dec 11, 2009 By Robert Wall The Airbus Military A400M took to the air at 10:15 a.m. on Dec. 11 — the culmination of a two-decade long struggle on Europe's part to develop a next-generation airlifter. Powered by its four 11,000-shaft-horsepower Europrop International TP400D engines, MSN001 took off from the EADS facility in Seville with Airbus's chief military test pilot Ed Strongman at the controls and Ignacio "Nacho" Lombo in the right seat. Eric Isorce is the senior flight test engineer, joined by Jean-Philippe Cottet, Dider Ronceray, and Gerard Leskerpit. Around 50 engineers in each of the two main ground facilities in Seville and Toulouse were monitoring flight test parameters. The flight is planned to last 3 hours and be used to check out basic handling characteristics of the aircraft. The event kicks off a flight test program that should log 4,370 hours, says Eric Isorce, the chief flight test engineer. Around 60% of the effort will be focused on the military certification, the rest to gain European Aviation Safety Agency approval — a first for a military airlifter. Five aircraft will eventually be part of the flight test program.
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