Airbus has unveiled the first A350F cargo aircraft built for flight testing, rolling it out of the paint hall in Toulouse, France, on 19 August 2026 with a livery designed to look like a giant cardboard parcel.
The design is a nod to the plane's future role as a freight carrier. The fuselage of the cargo version of the A350 is painted kraft brown and covered in realistic packaging details, including a shipping label, strips of orange adhesive tape and handling pictograms.
Among the pictograms is the phrase "This Way Up," accompanied by two arrows pointing skyward to show which way the giant "parcel" should be carried. On the cargo door, which measures 4.50 metres wide and 4.30 metres tall on the rear left of the aircraft, is written the joking message "Open here for business."
Livery designed by an Irish artist and two Canadian teenagers
The livery was not created by Airbus's own design teams. It came from John Feehan, a graphic designer from Dublin, Ireland, and brothers Quinnten and Ellisten Iversen, teenagers from Calgary, Canada. The three won a livery design competition for the A350F that Airbus launched in 2022, beating around 4,000 other entrants in 2023.
Because their two submissions were relatively similar, Airbus decided to merge them into a single design. Feehan said the competition had been a great challenge to think outside the box and a unique chance to work with a leader in aviation, remarks he made at the prize-giving ceremony.
The Iversen brothers, who were twelve and sixteen years old at the time and are keen aviation enthusiasts, were thrilled by the win. Quinnten, the elder of the two, said that if someone had told him a year earlier that he would be at the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget unveiling a livery he had helped design, he did not think he would have believed them.
From contest win to reality
Three years on, their design now covers the fuselage of the first A350F, which is due to take to the air soon. Several industrial sources told Reuters last week that the aircraft's first test flight would take place next month.
Airbus has more than a hundred firm orders for the cargo version of its long-haul A350 and is targeting entry into service in the second half of 2027. The aircraft will be able to carry up to 111 tonnes of payload over a distance of 8,700 kilometres.
Specifications and rivalry with Boeing
Its cargo hold, with a volume of 700 cubic metres, will feature five different temperature zones to accommodate different types of goods. Its main rival, the Boeing 777-8F, is due to reach the market in early 2029.
