Airbus A310

The Airbus A310 is a medium- to long-range twin-engined wide-body jet airliner that was developed and manufactured by Airbus. Released in 1983, it was the second aircraft to enter production by Airbus Industrie, the consortium of European aerospace companies now a subsidiary of Airbus Group. The A310 is a derivative of the Airbus A300, the first twin-engined widebody airliner.

History

Background

During the development of the original Airbus A300, a range of aircraft size and capacity were studied; the resulting Airbus A300B was one of the smaller options. When the A300B1 prototypes emerged, a number of airlines asked for greater capacity, which resulted in the initial production A300B2 version. As the A300 entered service, it became increasingly apparent that there was also a sizable market for a smaller aircraft; some operators did not have enough traffic to justify the relatively large A300, others wanted more frequency or lower aircraft-mile costs at the expense of higher seat-mile cost, (specifically Swissair and Lufthansa).