Its very unfortunate that many people think that just because A350 and B787 are new that they have to be competing against each other. The A350 is meant to be a competitor to the B777, and not the B787. The B787 meanwhile is meant to rival the A330. The A350/B777 market is about high 300s to 400s (like the A350-1000) while the A330/B787 caters more to high 200s to max 340-ish.
Boeing 77W is the competitor for the A350-1000
Boeing 787-10 / Boeing 77L is the competitor for the A350-900
Boeing 787-8 is the competitor for the A330-300
Misinformation. People think because the A350 and B787 came out roughly around the same time and both use revolutionary composites that they compete with each other… it tends to be the same people who claim the A350 is a copy of the Dreamliner. I say to them… do your research!! The A330neo serves the purpose of competeing more with the B787, it is still going to be more comfortable as they have adopted 3-3-3 on the B787 compared to 2-4-2 on the A330 so there are various benefits to buying them instead and why switch manufacturers if you already have A330’s? It’s the perfect choice for quite a few airlines/
The smallest variant of the A350, the A358, competes with the 787s. But what people often don’t know is that the bigger variants (A350-900 and -1000) are meant to compete with the new 777X models. The “real” competitor of the 787 is the A330neo.
The 787 is weird because Airbus denied it would be a threat to the A330. When they realised it was they quickly copied the Carbon Fibre idea. So you could say the 787 competes with the A350 and A330. Not the 777
How do you go about copying a plane that’s in development? You do realise the time the plans would have been finalised for the A350, the B787 wasn’t even revealed to the world. This bias is getting stupid to read now.
Composites have been used on the A380 and other planes, full composites would be the natural progression when thy have had dedicated lots of capital in R&D in Bristol and other locations for many years prior to the A380. Look at the A310, that used composites.