The history of Emirates and the A350 is one that probably doesn’t make anyone in either Emirates or Airbus happy. They were an early customer for the type but, when Airbus decided to go for a larger engine for the A350-1000, Emirates was really unhappy and cancelled its orders. It was a long time before they decided that the A350-900 should indeed be part of the fleet.

There is still a debate going on about whether they will take the A350-1000 based on engine durability issues in Middle East conditions so who knows what will come. Anyway, all of that is a long-winded way of getting to the fact that the first of their jets have now been delivered. I went to Lyon for a quick work trip and didn’t know that Emirates was using its new jets there.

As we landed, I saw one holding for departure and got some shots through the window of the plane I was on as it departed. A couple of days later, I was departing, and the inbound Emirates had just landed. It was taxiing in as we took off. Some sort of symmetry there. No doubt I’ll see loads of them over time.