A350: revising the Type Rating systems

The A350 is an Airbus twin-engine widebody, available as the A350-900 and A350-1000, powered by Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engines. It first flew in 2013 and entered service in 2015. Its structure makes extensive use of composite materials, which lighten the aircraft and change certain maintenance habits, but not the way it is flown.

It is designed for long-haul flights, so your revision covers topics less prominent on a single-aisle aircraft, such as range, diversion options and the management of long flights.

As on the A320, the pilot issues commands via sidestick to computers that protect the flight envelope. What changes is the interface: large screens, a keyboard and a cursor to navigate through the pages, and a layout that groups more information together. Failures and alerts still follow the same principle: a prioritized message, actions to carry out, and limitations afterward.

If you already know the A320, you’re not starting from scratch, but the aircraft is more integrated: a single failure more often affects several systems at once. So learn to connect each system to the ones that depend on it.

The chapters are the same as for any airliner, but with a more modern architecture: electrical (engine generators, APU, batteries, emergency power source), hydraulics, fuel, flight controls, air and pressurization, fire protection, landing gear and brakes, and navigation.

For each one, prepare three things: how it works in normal operation, which typical failures affect it, and which limitations remain. This reading grid is more useful than a list of isolated figures, which you’ll then find easier to remember.

On a long flight, a failure isn’t handled only at the moment it occurs. You need to know how to decide on a diversion, assess remaining fuel, choose an alternate airport, and take into account the rules specific to twin-engine flights over long distances away from suitable airports. These notions of alternates and range come up regularly in checks.

Crew management is also part of the picture: on a long flight, task-sharing, rest periods and communication between pilots are a subject in their own right.

Work through it chapter by chapter. Read the manual chapter, do a set of questions, read every explanation, then note what surprised you. For such an integrated aircraft, keep coming back to the links between systems: on the day of a check, it’s often the cross-system question that makes the difference.

Keep limitations and emergency procedures for separate sessions, to be revisited regularly, since these are the answers you need to know without thinking.

On such an integrated aircraft, checks place heavy emphasis on understanding the links between systems. An electrical failure can affect pressurization, fuel or flight controls: you’ll be asked to trace the chain of effects and explain what remains available. Decisions to be made during a long flight, such as a diversion or the choice of an alternate airport, are also covered.

As always, answering in a fixed order helps: what I observe, what I carry out, what this changes for the rest of the flight, and what I decide.

Allow thirty to forty minutes. Ten minutes rereading a chapter, then a set of questions on that chapter, then reading through all the explanations. Finish by drawing the architecture of the system studied from memory — electrical or hydraulics, for example — and noting any unclear points.

Once a week, do a mixed set of questions covering several chapters and check whether your mistakes always come from the same links between systems. This is a good indicator of what still needs consolidating before a check.

The first mistake is revising the A350 as if it were just a bigger A320. The architecture is more integrated and the procedures account for long-haul operations: focus on what’s specific rather than assuming everything is the same. The second is neglecting the less spectacular chapters, such as fuel or air, even though they often lead to precise questions.

Finally, don’t confuse reading a chapter with understanding it: if you can’t explain out loud why a valve opens or which source feeds which bus bar, then the chapter hasn’t really sunk in, even if you remember reading it.

In the ATPL’s Type Rating tab, the A350 has sets of questions organized by chapter, in English like its documentation, along with illustrated courses covering the aircraft’s major systems.

These question sets are training tools: they replace neither your aircraft’s manuals (FCOM, FCTM, QRH) nor your airline’s documentation, which remain the sole authoritative references. ForAllPilots is an independent website, with no affiliation to manufacturers, airlines or authorities.