Developed and manufactured by Airbus, the Airbus A310 gives passengers a feeling of safety and comfort during the flight. Please refer to the useful information about this aircraft in the following article.
The Airbus A310 is a wide-body jet aircraft developed in 1978. This is the second aircraft manufactured by the Airbus Group, which is contributed by the European aerospace companies. The Airbus A310 is developed from the A300 but it has a shorter length and a medium to long range.
Development
On 26 September, 1967, the governments of England, France and West Germany signed a Memorandum of Understanding to begin the joint development of the 300-seat Airbus A300. The airlines approaching Airbus expressed their desire to have a large passenger market for smaller aircraft. Therefore, Airbus commenced researching such an aircraft with the original A300B10MC design made for the previous A300 program. In late 1977, the new wing design took place in Hatfield.
Swissair became the first airline to place a firm order for 10 Airbus 310 aircraft on 15 March, 1978. Lufthansa also quickly placed a $ 240 million 10-aircraft order; additional orders from French operator Air France and Spanish airline Iberia shortly followed.
In April 1978, at the Hanover air show, Airbus displayed a model of the proposed A310. On 9 June, 1978, Swissair and Lufthansa airlines developed a common specification for the aircraft and announced that they would place launch orders within a month.
Airbus decided to launch the A300B10, now known as the A310 on 7 July 1978.
On 3 April, 1982, the A310-200 prototype aircraft made its maiden flight.
Operational history
In April 1983, Airbus A310 aircraft entered the revenue service with the launch at Swissair.
In July 2007, Airbus stopped offering the A310 aircraft. It was replaced in Airbus' fleet by the highly successful A330-200.
As of July 2017, 37 A310 aircraft were still in commercial service. Air Transat and Mahan Air are the major operators with 9 aircraft each. Besides, FedEx Express has 6 aircrafts and 7 other airlines operate 13 ones.
Specifications
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A310 Airplane Characteristics |
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Model |
A310-200 |
A310-300 |
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Cockpit Crew |
Two |
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2-class |
220 passengers (20F + 200Y) |
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1-class |
237Y 8-abreast |
243Y 8-abreast / 265Y 9-abreast |
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Exit limit |
275 passengers |
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Lower deck |
14 LD3 container |
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Length |
46.66 m (153 ft 1 in) |
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Height |
15.8 m (51 ft 10 in) fuselage |
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Wing |
43,9 m (144 ft) span, 219 m 2 (2.360 sq ft) area, 28 °sweep |
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