The Airbus Military A400M new generation airlifter has received its Type Acceptance at the contractual Initial Operating Clearance (IOC) Standard from OCCAR, the Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation, on behalf of the Launch Nations (Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom). It represents a historic milestone of the A400M program after 10 years of development and more than 5,000 flight test hours.

This first military standard acceptance is the last step prior to the aircraft acceptance of MSN7, the first serial aircraft, by the French Defence Procurement Agency DGA and its subsequent delivery to the French Air Force in the coming days.

The common basis for Military certification was approved on 19 July following a recommendation by representatives of the seven launch nations known as the Certification and Qualification Committee (CQC). And Airbus Military accordingly received on 24 July the Military Type Certificate (Certificat de Type) for A400M aircraft from DGA.

The A400M is the most versatile airlifter currently available responding to the most varied needs of world Air Forces and other organisations in the 21st century. It can perform three very different types of duties: it is able to perform both tactical missions directly to the point of need and long range strategic/logistic ones.

The A400M can also serve as an air-to-air refueling “tanker”. Powered by four unique counter-rotating Europrop International (EPI) TP400 turboprop powerplants, the A400M offers a wide flight envelope in terms of both speed and altitude. It is the ideal airlifter to fulfill the most varied requirements of any nation around the globe in terms of military, humanitarian and any other “civic” mission for the benefit of society.

The A400M was launched in 2003 to respond to the combined needs of seven European Nations regrouped within OCCAR (Belgium, France, Germany, Luxemburg, Spain, Turkey and the UK), with Malaysia joining in 2005. This is one of the major reasons for its extreme versatility. Its maiden flight took place on 11th December 2009.