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IAG’s Iberia Airways has recently announced the launch of their first long-haul international route on their new Airbus A350-900, from Madrid to New York.

The wide-body Airbus A350-900 can carry 315 passengers in a two-class format (Economy in two sections and business) and has a flight range of an amazing 15,000km (8100 nm). This plane has been dubbed Airbus’s answer for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which can only carry around 300 passengers and flies only 13,000km (7300 nm). The A350 is also more fuel efficient and will pass on those savings to IAG shareholders.

Previously, Iberia has only been running their sixteen A350-900 within Europe, flying from Madrid to popular large cities like London and Paris. But now, feeling confident in the performance of their A350 fleet has booked it for routes to the big apple, New York.

The Route

The new flight will fly from Madrid’s Barajas International Airport in a twice a day service to New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. The flight will have an estimated flight time of seven hours and 25-minutes, leaving Madrid at 10:00am, arriving just after lunch New York local time. The plane will then rest overnight before returning at 10:00am New York local time and arriving just before midnight in Spain.

This plane will replace the ageing A340-600s that current service this route, and whilst it has a shorter range than the older plane, it can move one hundred kilometres faster per hour.

The Experience

The new plane will have three distinct sections on board, a business class section, a premium economy section and a standard economy seating area. As a surprise, all seats will feature in-flight entertainment screens, power outlets, optional on-board Wi-Fi plus panoramic windows and LED mood lighting. The specifications also boast higher humidity on-board (no more dry skin) and air conditioning that does not blow into your face (or other words ‘draftless’).

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Iberia Airways has celebrated this new launch with some special events and activities throughout the summer. They have created a street food fair at Madrid Barajas International Airport, and give one of their lounges an American makeover. The reason there is something to celebrate the inclusion of these new planes is that they are the key to this airline achieving 8% growth per year until 2022. We can expect this plane to be utilised heavily throughout their network to replace their other ageing planes.

The rise of the A350

This, of course, is the third new A350 route fly to New York this year. Qatar Airways was the first with running an A350-900 to Doha (and will soon replace their Boeing 777 on the same route with an A350-1000) and LATAM Airlines flying directly to Sao Pablo. In October, this number will swell to four with Philippine Airlines beginning it’s non-stop service all the way to Manilla on the other side of the planet (it had previously used the Boeing 777 on this route that had to stop in Vancouver to refuel).

You can expect more developments on this story as this new plane model is used to roll out exciting new long-haul routes.