ON BOARD THE A330NEO OVER THE ATLANTIC
The Airbus A330 is the most successful widebody of Airbus. There are over 1,700 aircrafts sold, out of which, 1,400 have been already delivered. In its renewed version named Airbus 330neo (New Engine Option), the European consortium is convinced of the advantage of the new engines, new wing and new interior to provide performance and economy gains, facing the competition, especially the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
The A330 has its origin still in the 70s, when Airbus developed a series of projects derived from the Airbus 300, its first commercial jet. The first one of these projects to effectively enter into production was the Airbus 310. In the early 80s, the manufacturer launched the program of the A320 narrow-body jet, a revolutionary aircraft in various aspects, mainly in relation with the use of fly-by-wire flight electronic commands. With the success of this narrow-body, it would be a natural consequence to launch a long range wide-body that would take advantage of the efficiency gains obtained with the new technology.
A330 AND A340
This way, in January1986, began the development of a new wide-body family, a twin-engine aircraft (A330) and a 4-engine aircraft (A340). At that time, there still existed severe limitations regarding the operation of twin-engine aircrafts over large uninhabited areas (the so-called ETOPS, or Extended Twin-Engine Operations). Airbus’ idea was constructing two aircrafts essentially equal in design, systems and operation, in such a way that the operators could use the most convenient one in each route. Both aircrafts would have the same piloting cabin and could be flown by the same group of pilots. The spare part inventory would also be mostly shared.
The first aircraft to fly was the A340, in October 1991. The A330 made its inaugural flight in November 1992. Its first operator was the French company Air Inter in January 1994. In 1998, Airbus introduced the A330-200 version, with a shorter fuselage, followed by the cargo version A330-200F in 2010. Since