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Aviation History
1999
1999 - 2611.PDF
> 'j fJ £S±SjL \CRAFT DIRECTOR/ The A300-600F freighter was first flown in December 1993 following an order from FedEx, and most of the outstanding A3 00 orders are for this version. Last September, Airbus received an order from US package carrier UPS Airlines for 60 A3 00- 600Fs, including 3 0 firm orders, ensuring that pro duction of die aircraft will continue for some years. BAe Aviation Services and Dasa Airbus offer freighter conversions of the A300. BAe's pro gramme received its US supplemental type certificate in June 1997 and Dasa's approval fol lowed in late 1997. The two companies have con verted almost 50 aircraft, and the backlog takes orders beyond 100. Dasa has subcontracted some conversions to Aerospatiale Matra subsidiary Sogerma. AerospatialeMafraand Dasa Airbus are in talkswith BAe to form a conversion and maintenance joint venture, which could bethefirststep towards estab lishing a "European Maintenance and Conversion Company" as a wholly owned subsidiary of the pro posed Airbus single corporate entity (SCE). Meanwhile, Airbus has developed an avionics retrofit for the A3 00B2/B4, to meet new navigation requirements, which involves the installation of two GPS navigation and landing units and two flat- panel navigation displays. Production Final assembly of the A300-600 is integrated with that of the A310, and is under taken by Aerospatiale at Toulouse. Fourteen A300/A310s were delivered in 1998 and the combined production rate is running at about five a year (mostly A300s). Production is being undertaken on a build-to-order basis. Ordered 520 Delivered 483 A310 LAUNCHED INJuly 1978 as a short-fuselage derivative of the A3 00B4, the 210-seat A310 has a smaller, more advanced wing and a two-crew flightdeck. The aircraft entered service with Lufthansa and Swissair in April 1983 in its basic -200 form. A longer-range version, the -300, was introduced in 198 5, with increased weights and fuel capacity. Airbus has indicated triat future A310 devel opments could include optimising the aircraf for the 2 00-seat regional market, rather than the long-range sector for which it has been devel oped more recently. It sees demand returning when early A310s and Boeing 757s and 767s become due for replacement. Airbus has been studying an A310 follow-on, under die project name P305, which has been offered to China among a series of possible col laborative proposals to replace the defunct AE31X. Proposed changes include a 10/12- frame fuselage stretch, making the aircraft about the same size as the A3 00, along with new-generation engines and fly-by-wire flight controls to provide commonality widi die latest Airbus models. An alternative A300/A310 fol low-on could be based on die A3 30 (see entry). Dasa Airbus offers a cargo conversion for the A310 (similar to the A300B4), and has convert ed 44 A31 0s to date, primarily for FedEx. Production Ordered Delivered See A300 261 255 A318/A319/A320/A321 AIRBUS ENTERED the single-aisle, sub-200 seat market in March 1984 with die launch of the 150-seatA320. The European consortium's family of single-aisle, fly-by-wire airliners has four models offering two-class seating capacity for 107 to 185 passengers. The A320 - the world's first subsonic airliner to have a fly-by-wire flight control system and composite primary structures - had its first flightinFebruaryl987andenteredservicewitfi Air France just over a year later. The first ver sion was die A320-100, of which 21 were built. This was superseded by die A3 2 0-2 00, now die standard production version, which has increased fuel capacity and increased weights. In 1989, Airbus launched a stretched deriva tive, the 18 5 -seat A3 21-100, which entered ser vice widi Lufthansa in March 1994. An extended-range version, die A321-200, which has increased weights and fuel capacity, was introduced in 1997. Airbus is offering further increases in weight to up to 931MTOW. The first of two shorter-fuselage members, the 124-seat A319, was launched in June 1993 and entered service in May 1996 with Swissair. Deliveries begin later this year of die corporate jet (CJ) version of die A319 which, with up to seven auxiliary fuel tanks, can carry 10 passen gers over distances up to 11,600km. Airbus aims to produce up to 10-12 A319CJs a year from 2002 and is looking at broadening the range to include the A320 and A321. After first studying the development of an all- new 80/100-seat family with China and Singapore (die AE3IX), Airbus decided to cre- atea 100-seater based on theA320. Designated the A318, thus aircraft received full launch approval in April, underwritten by 109 orders and commitments from six customers. The first flight is scheduled for the third quarter of 2001, with deliveries beginning about a year later. The aircraft has a 4.5-frame shrink from the A319 and is offered with the P&W PW6000 and CFM56-5B. The fuselage reduction is achieved by removing 1.5 frames forward of die wing and tiiree aft. To compensate for the short er moment arm, the surface area of die vertical stabiliser had to be increased by extending the fin tip by about 0.8m. Sextant Avionique is contracted to be sole supplier of flat-panel liquid crystal displays (LCDs) for all die production fly-by-wire Airbus types from mid-2000. Sextant will also supply LCDs for retrofit to the in-service A3 2 0 family. Production Final assembly of the Airbus narrow- bodies is divided between the consortium's French and German partners. Aerospatiale builds the A320 at Toulouse, while Dasa Airbus has responsibility for the A319 and A321 and, from 2001, the A318, at its Hamburg plant. During 1998, 168 A320 family aircraft were delivered - 80 A320s and 88 A319/A32 Is. The single-aisle production rate is moving to 22 a month by the second quarter of 2000. As part of die agreement for Dasa Airbus to build the A318, any A319 production overspill will be transferred from Hamburg to Toulouse from 2 001, as an offset. Ordered 2,117 (30 A318s, 603 A319s, 1,220 A320s,264A321s) Delivered 1,024 (145 A319s, 743 A320s, 136 A321s) A330 The 190-seat A321 is the largest member of Airbus'four-pronged single-aisle A320 family THE A330 TWINJET and four-engined A340 were launched in June 1987 as a two- pronged, single aircraft programme, marking its entrv into the medium/lone'-haul canacitv 42 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 1 - 7 September 1999
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