 The new Airbus will be an evolution of the A330 |
Hundreds of jobs could be on their way to the Airbus plant at Broughton in Flintshire after the firm announced it was launching a new plane. The A350, which will have two variants, will be a medium-sized passenger jet for the long-haul market.
The announcement has been hailed as "extremely good news" for Broughton, which will assemble its wings.
Manufacturing should begin in 2006 or 2007, with the plane coming into service from 2010.
Airbus has said it was impossible to put a number on the new jobs which will come to Flintshire.
"It will create many hundred jobs over and above the jobs we have today," said Brian Fleet, Senior Vice President of Airbus UK.
Mr Fleet added that building the wings out of composite material rather than current metal wings would help guarantee the future of the plant.
 |  The start of building composite wings is the next part of our evolution  |
"Again it is the wings Broughton will be responsible for, but it is the first time we will be building a composite wing," he said.
"This will be a brand new technology for the Broughton site, and many hundreds of millions of investment in the Broughton site.
"We are not looking at the short-term, we are looking at the long-term. We are talking about looking at the programmes we will be building in 10, 15, 20, 30 years hence.
"The start of building composite wings is the next part of our evolution."
Mr Fleet said the planes would go into production as soon as it had enough orders from airlines.
He said the firm would start recruiting next year, but more significant increases would come in 2006-7.
| This gives the future of the plant more security for the people who work there now and also is a development for the future |
The Broughton plant already employs more than 6,000 staff. Many of the workers are involved in assembling wings for the massive superjumbo plane which will have its official launch in the new year.
Wings for the A380 superjumbo started leaving the factory for assembly in France in April this year.
There will be two variants of the A350. The A350-800 will carry 245 passengers with a range of up to 8,600 nautical miles, and the A350-900 is a 285-seater configeration on 7,500 miles.
Mr Fleet said the demand for the new planes was coming from annual increases in worldwide passenger growth.
Carl Sergeant, AM for Alyn and Deeside said: "This is a wonderful announcement and critical for the aerospace industry in the whole of Wales in Flintshire.
"This gives the future of the plant more security for the people who work there now and also is a development for the future."
Aerospace industry analyst Howard Wheeldon told BBC Wales that it was "overall very good news for jobs in the industry in the UK".
But he warned that there were still potential hurdles to overcome, with resistance in the US to financial assistance to Airbus from European partner governments.
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