Airbus A330 successful wide body
With the introduction of the A300 in the early 1970s, Airbus had one goal in mind; to create a family of aircraft. The family that would serve various markets and needs of customers; from the smallest narrow-body jets to larger aircraft able to carry more than 350 passengers.
The European manufacturer’s goal was to conquer the world with its wide array of products. The family’s first addition was the A310, a derivative of the A300. The A310 could seat 220 people in a typical two-class configuration, flying as far as 5,150 nm (9,540 km) with the -300 variant. Airbus’ next focus was the narrow-body market. With its the entry into that segment, the Toulouse-based company revolutionised the controls onboard an aircraft with fly-by-wire systems. Safety was touched upon as well: envelope protection systems prevented the aircraft from
performing beyond its safe limits.
However, for pilots and airlines, the A320 also showcased one thing: Airbus is serious about its family commitments, as a common cockpit eased the transition for pilots between the aircraft named using the A3XX formula. With the successful launch of its first narrow-body, the European company had its fair share of competition in the wide-body market, when the A320 was officially announced in 1984. Competition came in the form of such wide-bodies as the Boeing 747, the Boeing 767 (including the 767-200ER) and the McDonnell Douglas DC10 all of which were still in production. The Lockheed L-1011 TriStar was cancelled in 1981, with the last aircraft rolling out in 1984. At that time Airbus’ only answer to such amount of competition was the A300/A310. However, if the company wanted to get ahead of its competition, it had to innovate.
On 17 January 1994, 26 years ago, Airbus introduced the A330 into commercial service with Air Inter. This aircraft was a new, wide-body type of aircraft that would successfully help propel the company into a market-leading position in the years to come. On 27 January 1986, Airbus’ Supervisory board approved the development of the A330 and its bigger brother, the A340. With necessary funding now available, the consortium was in a position to finalise the detailed technical definition for the A330 and A340 with potential customer airlines and discuss terms and conditions for launch commitments.
The company decided to develop both wide-body jets to share a common type rating, much like Boeing did with the 757 and the 767. However, what was even more unique, was that pilots who qualified to fly the Europe-built twin-aisle jets could also transition easily to fly the A320, according to the manufacturer’s historical retrospective. This was made possible with the Airbus concepts of cross crew qualification; pilots trained to fly one Airbus aircraft can qualify to operate another with relatively little extra training. Furthermore, both the A330 and the A340 were the first jets to share the same basic fuselage, wing and tail, which allowed Airbus to save some extra cash and gain an upper hand in the sales department. An Airbus customer would be further incentivised due to the ease of switching between the A320, A330 and the A340, allowing an airline to be much more flexible in its scheduling departments.
Nevertheless, the stakes were high. The government of Britain put in $750 million and the governments of France and West Germany put a $1billion each into the development of the two newest wide bodies. The subsidies angered many people, including the Boeing and McDonnell Douglas companies.