Lots of people have seen the new Airbus A350XWV in person and even been on board, but until recently the interior hadn't been shown off with passenger seats. And unfortunately none of those early visitors was me, truly ashamed. That changed last Monday's, I had the opportunity to see one of the test aircraft, MSN-002, in person and, quite literally, kick the tires. Once those formalities were taken care of, I was able to head on board and walk through the length of the plane, exploring the seats, labs, and galleys. Economy class was pretty nice. Of course, with the generous pitch afforded the test aircraft, that's what I expected to see. The interior of the fuselage measures as narrower than a Boeing's triple-7, but the 333 layout still felt quite reasonable. Alas, I didn't have anyone sitting next to me to confirm how our shoulders set up. And then there's the part where Airbus acknowledges that 343 will be an option on the type. That's guaranteed to be a tight squeeze for passengers. The overhead bins are huge, which will be very important if they are aligned to really do cram that many people on board. Business classes were the good stuff should be, so I was very excited to move forward and try out the seats up front. The 121 staggered layout in the demo plane provides direct aisle access for all passengers and a spacious feel to the cabin. Part of that is no overhead bins in the center. The larger outward bin should be sufficient to accommodate all the business class passengers according to Airbus. While MSN 002 has a passenger interior installed, it still is very much a test aircraft, and that means lots of testing equipment still on board. The pseudo passengers are still strapped down in many of the seats, and the test monitoring hardware is still installed, taking up a few rows of seats in the front of the economy class cabin. The kit was not powered on while we were touring the plane, but Airbus has some press photos showing what it looks like when monitoring a test flight. Very, very cool stuff. And now we just have to wait a few months for a guitar airways to take delivery of the first ship. Looks like it should be a fun ride.