The Widebody Wars — DC-10 vs L-1011 vs A300 (II)
Part II — The Airbus A300/A310: How a European cooperation made a airplane which impressed the World
I talked about the two main American trijet rivals of the Boeing 747 (the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar) and how they failed to split a market which was scarce in demand at the time for airplanes of that kind. And it’ll become even more scarce with the advent of the widebody twinjet. And the idea of the first widebody twinjet comes from Europe. Yes, I’m talking about the Airbus A300.
2. A different way: The Airbus A300/A310 and how Airbus won the 1970s-1980s Widebody Wars
The history of the Airbus A300 began during the 1960s, when the European manufacturers Hawker Siddeley and British Aircraft Corporation of United Kingdom and Sud Aviation of France had ambitions of building a 200-seat airliner for the civil aviation market, which was growing at the time. Studies for either a stretched twinjet Hawker Siddeley Trident or a BAC Three-Eleven (based upon the BAC One-Eleven) were considered, but because of higher production costs (in comparison to American counterparts), and also due to the fact that the European market was fragmented at the time, these projects ended up on the shelves.
To overcome this issue, the report recommended the pursuit of multinational projects between the leading manufacturers of the region. One of those prospective programs was the HBN-100, a proposed 260-seat widebody jointly developed by Hawker Siddeley, Nord Aviation and Breguet Aviation.
Governments at the time were keen to support those multinational airliner projects, like the German government, as a way to invigorate the aircraft industry, which declined after the World War Two. In July 1967, during a meeting between the French, the German and the British Governments, an agreement was made for greater cooperation between European nations in the field of aviation technology and for the “joint development of an airbus”. The term at the time was just a generic term for a large airplane, acceptable in various languages, including French.
After this agreement, a concern was about the way how the Airbus A300 was to be powered. The original plans called to power the Airbus A300 with Rolls-Royce RB207 engines, but because of the delays of the RB211 engine which powered Lockheed’s L-1011 TriStar, and to attract potential customers in the United States (including American Airlines), they decided to power the airplane with General Electric CF6–50 engines, the same used on the Boeing 747–200B and the McDonnell Douglas DC-10-15/DC-10-30. Another option added was the Pratt & Whitney JT9D engine, the same engine used also on the 747 and the DC-10.
In 10th April 1969, the British government decided to withdraw from the project due to this fact, but Hawker-Siddeley remained as a contractor for the project, designing the wings of the Airbus A300 airplane.
On 29th May 1969, the project was finally launched during the Paris Air Show, with the signature of an agreement between the French and German governments (more precisely, between the French Transportation minister, Jean Chamant, and the German Economics minister, Karl Schiller). The objective is to create a aircraft which was smaller and lighter than the trijets of McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed. The original plan called for a 250-seat A300B airplane, but due to demand from Air France, a stretched A300B2 was also offered. Air France became the launch customer of the airplane by signing a letter of intent for 6 airplanes in 3rd September 1970.
The final assembly line of the A300 was chosen to be located adjacent to Toulouse-Blagnac Airport.
In 18th December 1970, Airbus Industrie was established following an agreement between Aérospatiale (formerly Nord and Sud Aviation) of France and the antecedents of Deutsche Aerospace of Germany, receiving each a 50% stake. In 1971, a third partner entered in the consortium (CASA, from Spain, who received a stake of 4.2%). In 1979, due to the merger of Hawker Siddeley into British Aerospace, Britain joined the Airbus consortium, acquiring a stake of 20%, with France and Germany reducing to 37.9%. Airbus was initially headquartered in Paris and its suppliers were located in points throughout Europe.
In September 1969, the construction of the A300 prototype began. Due to the fact that the aircraft has parts built by suppliers around the continent, the use of ferries and roads, used to transport the parts of the first prototype, was deemed to be too time-consuming by Felix Kracht, Airbus Industrie’s production director. The solution was to use specialised airplanes to move the parts from its suppliers to the final assembly line of the A300 in Toulouse. These airplanes were a fleet of Aero Spacelines Super Guppies, based on Boeing’s 377 Stratocruiser, reducing considerably the time spent between the manufacturing sites, and making the A300 the first airplane to use just-in-time manufacturing techniques, which allowed companies to manufacture its sections as fully-equipped, ready-to-fly assemblies.
On 28th September 1972, the first prototype was unveiled to the public in a ceremony in which the Concorde also participated. The airplane’s first flight was in 28th October 1972, lasting one hour and 25 minutes, captained by Max Fischl and with Bernard Ziegler, the son of Henri Ziegler, as the first officer. The flight test program, involving 4 aircraft, was relatively problem-free, accumulating a total of 1,580 flight hours throughout. On 15th March 1974, type certificates from aviation authorities of France and Germany was granted, and on 23rd May of that year, a certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration was granted. The A300B2, the first version of the airplane, entered service in 1974, with the A300B4 entering in service a year later.
Despite the success on manufacturing, testing and certification, the sales were initially poor (apart from Air France, Lufthansa, Indian Airlines and Korean Air), especially from 1975 to 1977, where a number of “whitetails” were stored without anyone to purchase. It was becoming clear that a widebody for short haul was flawed.
Anyways, in 1973, Airbus made a promotional effort to sell the A300 in a tour around the World, wooing airline bosses in all of the five continents, with success, especially in Asia.
But a twist of fate will happen on this tour around the World.
When Airbus’s tour arrived to Chicago (in the United States), the CEO of Eastern Air Lines, Frank Borman (which also was one of the astronauts from the Apollo 8 mission), became impressed with the capabilities of the airplane, because of the fact that consumed 30% less fuel than the comparable Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, making Airbus a serious competitor to Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. Eastern proceeded to order 23 Airbus A300 in 1977, after testing the airplane in service at the airline.
Another of the saviours of the airplane was the advent of Extended Range Twin Operations (ETOPS), a revised FAA rule which allowed airplanes to fly long distance routes previously off-limits. This allowed Airbus to develop the A300 as a medium-to-long haul airliner, thus making the airplane more attractive to airlines.
This effectively launched Airbus towards its victory in the widebody wars of the 1970s, and it will prop Airbus to develop another aircraft to attend the demands of the Airlines, beginning in the late 1970s–1980s.
One of its initial derivatives of the Airbus A300, the Airbus A310, was launched in 1978 as the A300B10, which is a shrink of the A300 destined to compete with smaller airplanes like Boeing’s 727/757 and McDonnell Douglas’s DC-9, with a new, higher aspect ratio wing, smaller horizontal tail, two pilot flight crew, the first glass cockpit of its kind, and wingtip fences (only in the A310–300), features which will be added to the Airbus A300–600. Intially, the company planned to build a regional A310–100 and a transatlantic A310–200. However, the plans for a A310–100 were dropped and was replaced with a extended range A310–300 airplane, with a range of 9,600 km. The A310’s wing was designed by British Aerospace in Britain, after the re-entry in the Airbus program in 1978.
The first flight of the A310 was on 3rd April 1982. By this time, the aircraft had accumulated 181 orders, placed by 15 airlines, somewhat superior to the initial orders scored by the Airbus A300. The launch customers of the type were Swissair and Lufthansa. The A310 was introduced into service in April 1983 with Swissair. The airplane had initially three engines, the General Electric CF6–80A, the Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7R4D1, and the Rolls-Royce RB211–524B4, which never came to fruition. General Electric powered A310s were latter offered with CF6–80C2 variants (with either 53,000 lbf or 59,000 lbf of thrust) after the introduction of the A310–300. Pratt & Whitney variants were initially powered with JT9Ds, but when the PW4000–94 was available in 1987, the A310–300 version of the aircraft was offered with either the PW4152 (52,000 lbf), PW4156A (56,000 lbf) or the PW4158 (58,000 lbf).
This variant of the A300 was produced between 1982 and 1998, and had military (such as the Airbus A310 MRTT or the CC-150 Polaris used by the Royal Canadian Air Force), combi and freighter variants, these ones converted from passenger and combi airplanes. The number of airplanes sold were 260, with five of these unfilled (ordered by Iraqi Airways).
Another of the variants launched in the 1980s was the Airbus A300–600. Originally called Airbus A300B4–600, this was the mainstream version of the Airbus A300, with approximately 313 airplanes sold. It had the same length of the Airbus A300B2 and B4 versions, but increased space because it uses the A310's rear fuselage and horizontal tail. Other changes include more powerful General Electric CF6–80A or Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7R4D1 engines (coming from the A310), the use of Honeywell 331–250 APU, the elimination of the flight engineer position (also originated from the A310), the incorporation of simpler single-slotted Fowler flaps (also like the A310), the deletion of removal outboard ailerons, and wingtip fences. The airplane made its maiden flight on 8 July 1983 and was introduced later that year with Saudi Arabian Airlines. The airplane had both passenger and freighter variants, which made it a success within the air freight companies, like DHL, Federal Express (later FedEx) and UPS (United Parcel Service).
An variant with additional range, the A300–600R (officially A300B4–600R) had a additional trim fuel tank in the tail. All A300s built from 1989 to 2007 were A300–600Rs, powered by either General Electric CF6–80C2 or Pratt & Whitney PW4000. The first delivery of this type was in 1988 to American Airlines, and Japan Air System (later merged with Japan Airlines) took delivery of the last passenger A300 in 2002.
The final variant of the Airbus A300 is the Airbus Beluga (or A300B4–600ST), a airplane designed to replace the Aero Spacelines Super Guppies in the mission of flying parts from Airbus’s suppliers to Airbus’s Final Assembly Line in Toulouse, France. A pre-design of the airplane was conducted in 1991–92, with the parts for the airplane being provided by 15 companies, including CASA (Spain), Dornier (Germany), with Sogerma (France) making the final assembly work. The construction of the first airplane began in 1992, with its maiden flight performed in 13th September 1994 and beginning service in 1995.
Originally, 4 aircraft were ordered with an option for a fifth, which was later firmed up in the second half of the 1990s due to the increase of demand for Airbus airplanes.
The Airbus Beluga has carried not just parts for Airbus aircraft, but also other special loads, including space station components, large and delicated artwork, industrial machines, helicopters, the engines for the Airbus A380 (the Rolls-Royce Trent 900, not the Engine Alliance GP7200, which is carried by the Antonov An-124). The fleet of Airbus Beluga is actually owned by Airbus Transport International (ATI) and the Beluga’s fleet compartment is of 7.4 metres (24 feet) wide and 37.7 metres (124 feet) long.
These airplanes still operate at this task nowadays, but are being replaced with a Beluga XL version of the Airbus A330–200, which will begin operations in 2019, effectively replacing the last A300 Beluga in 2025.
In 12th July 2007, after delivering more than 500 airplanes, Airbus ended the A300 program with the delivery of a A300–600RF to the U.S.-based FedEx Express. The airplane is still being provided with after sales support by Airbus until the end of the decade of 2040. The Airbus A300, in all of its variants, was replaced by the Airbus A330, a derivative which incorporated various technologies (like a more advanced fly-by-wire flight system, with sidesticks in the cockpit) originated from the narrowbody A320.
The A300, the project of a cooperation between European countries, was indeed the airplane which became the true winner of the widebody wars of the 1970s-1980s, moving Airbus towards becoming a serious competitor to Boeing and McDonnell Douglas (until McDonnell Douglas actually merged with Boeing in 1997).
The Airbus saga began with the A300, and still continues today with considerable success.
