4/03/1982: Maiden Flight of the Airbus A310

DALLAS — Today, in 1982, the first Airbus A310 prototype conducted its maiden flight and received its type certification on March 11, 1983.

The Airbus A310 is a wide-body aircraft designed and manufactured by Airbus Industrie, a consortium of European aerospace manufacturers at the time. Before the new decade, Airbus required a plane smaller than the A300, the world's first twin-jet wide-body. 

A310 Development

The British, French, and West German governments' memorandum of understanding (MoU), signed on September 26, 1967, paved the way for the inception of the 300-seat Airbus A300, the consortium's first airliner. However, amid plans to reduce production costs, Airbus explored several early design studies performed during the A300 program. 

From this, and with the help of other industry players, a forward-looking idea would stay set in the mind of the consortium: to build a family of aircraft for different market needs but with more commonalities than differences. 

Due to the increasingly strong interest in the tentative airliner, Airbus launched the A300B10, known as the A310, into production on July 7, 1978.

BAe Joins the A310 Program

At the 1978 Farnborough Air Show, the British Secretary of State for Industry, Eric Varley, declared that BAe would rejoin Airbus Industrie as a full partner from January 1, 1979. 

Under the terms of the deal, BAe would be given a 20% stake in Airbus Industrie and would play "a complete role in the development and production of the A310."

Jean Roeder, chief engineer of Deutsche Airbus, speaking of the A310, said, "We showed the world we were not sitting on a nine-day wonder, and that we wanted to realise a family of planes...we won over customers we wouldn't otherwise have won...now we had two planes that had a great deal in common as far as systems and cockpits were concerned."

A310 Design

The Airbus A310 was a twin-engined wide-body jet airliner that flew between medium and long distances. It was a scaled-down version of the earlier aircraft, but the two had significant variations. 

The fuselage had the same cross-section as the A300, but it could only accommodate 200 passengers because it was shorter. To improve capacity, the rear fuselage was extensively redesigned, with altered tapering and a step aft of the rear bulkhead; the same design modification was transferred back to later A300 models.

Range, Engines

Airbus had initially intended two separate models of the A310: a regional A310-100 and a transcontinental A310-200. The A310-100 had a range of 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 kilometers; 2,300 miles) with 200 passengers, while the A310-200 had a higher MTOW and center section fuel, allowing it to bear the same load for an additional 1,000 nautical miles (1,900 km; 1,200 mi). 

The General Electric CF6-45B2 and Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7R4 were among the primary engines available for the type. At one point, the British engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce considered providing an engine for the A310, the Rolls-Royce RB.207, but eventually decided against it in favor of a smaller three-spool design, the RB.211.

Orders, Deliveries

Swissair (LX) and Lufthansa (LH) placed orders for the A310 (then known as the A300B10) on July 7, 1978. The aircraft entered revenue service with LX in April 1983, competing with the Boeing 767-200, which had been launched six months earlier. 

Because of its longer range and ETOPS certification, the A310 could fly across the Atlantic. 255 aircraft were delivered until the last delivery in June 1998, when the larger Airbus A330-200 replaced it. 

Major operators of the A310 include Mahan Air (W5), Iran Air (IR), Royal Jordanian (RJ), Ariana Afghan Airlines (FG), and Air Transat (TS).

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