Airbus says the potentially hazardous maximum energy rejected take-off demonstration for the A380 that it undertook last weekend was a “non-event”, with the aircraft and systems behaving exactly as predicted.

“The test went exactly as planned,” says Airbus chief test pilot Jacques Rosay, who was at the controls of Rolls-Royce Trent 900-powered A380 MSN001 (F-WWOW) alongside vice-president Airbus flight test division Claude Lelaie for the trial at the Istres test airfield in southern France on 4 March (pictured below). In total, seven crew were on board the A380 including a flight engineer representing the European Aviation Safety Agency.