Iberia completes first A321XLR commercial flight 

Iberia has completed the first revenue flight with an Airbus A321XLR aircraft. 

The brand-new aircraft, with registration EC-OIL, took off from Madrid-Barajas International Airport (MAD) at 08.18 local time on November 6, 2024, bound for Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) where it landed at around 10:00 local time. 

Airbus delivered the first A321XLR aircraft to Iberia at its Hamburg-Finkenwerder (XFW) factory a few days prior, on October 30, 2024. The aircraft is fitted with 182 seats, 14 of which are in business class. 

The Spanish flag carrier will use the recently delivered aircraft on some familiarization flights to Paris-CDG and London-Heathrow (LHR) in early November 2024, before deploying it on transatlantic routes. Boston-Logan (BOS) has already been confirmed as the first US destination for the type. 

The A321XLR is expected to provide an efficient way to operate thin routes over long distances, for example, enabling the launch of new point-to-point services linking secondary cities on opposite sides of the Atlantic. 

The launch customer of the A321XLR was first expected to be Lebanese carrier Middle Eastern Airlines (MEA) but the first delivery slot was switched to International Airlines Group (IAG), which ordered 14 of the new aircraft type.  

Originally, Aer Lingus was to be the first operator of the A321XLR, but labor disputes at the Irish airline led IAG to transfer the first A321XLR to Iberia. The post Iberia completes first A321XLR commercial flight  appeared first on AeroTime.

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