The Airbus A300B

More than forty years ago the Airbus adventure started with the A300B, an innovative response to airlines’ requirements. In 1972 the world’s first wide-body twin-aisle commercial aircraft performed its maiden flight, the first steps toward changing the face of modern aviation.

A300 Beginnings

The 1960s was a time of change in the aviation world.  Jet travel was opening up the skies and allowing more people to travel further than ever before. Aircraft were becoming more dependable and the call for larger capacity aircraft was being made by airliners. In Europe, it was feared that the market would become dominated by U.S. aircraft manufacturers if there wasn’t a timely and cost-effective European offering to combat this.

The problem with the European market was that it was fragmented.  That is to say that each nation had its aircraft industry producing for a small market. This meant that any aircraft type produced would have a short production life until its market was saturated, which made it very difficult for a manufacturer to recoup development costs, much less turn a good profit.

Nevertheless, in the mid-1960s aircraft manufacturers saw a need for a 200 seat airliner in the market. To try and build on the technology they already had, they looked at resizing their current stock. For example, Hawker Siddeley looked at stretching their Trident, while the British Aircraft Corporation thought to stretch their BAC 111 to a BAC 211 and BAC 311.

The Plowden Report of 1965 confirmed that production of aircraft in Europe came in at a 20% higher cost than those in the U.S.A. and with shorter production runs, it was recommended that collaboration was the only way to address this problem.

A300 Collaboration

American Airlines and Air France had already expressed interest in a 200 seat twin jet and European leaders were very keen to ensure that a European offering would be in the mix. They were keen to stop the domination of U.S. made airliners, particularly in Germany whose aviation industry had not yet recovered since World War II. To this end, in July 1967 a meeting was held between the ministers of France, the U.K. and Germany. The outcome was that they supported the concept of collaboration to produce an Airbus. The word was felt to be descriptive of the desired outcome and translated well into each of the three languages.

This was to be the second European collaboration with Concorde being the first.

French engineer Roger Béteille was appointed technical director shortly after the ministerial meeting and set about drawing up a work share plan for what would become the A300 project. This plan stated that France would produce the cockpit, control systems and lower centre part of the fuselage. Germany would produce the forward, rear and upper parts of the centre fuselage. The Netherlands would produce the moving parts of the wings. Hawker Siddeley of the U.K. would produce the wings and Spain would produce the horizontal tailplane.

The Technical Director also specified that the latest technologies must be part of the new offering to create a differentiation from current offerings. In addition, metric measurements were avoided in favour of imperial measurements, similar to U.S. aircraft, as well as English being the working language. These cultural decisions were part of Airbus’ success as they showed that a European company could offer a product familiar to many markets.

The new technologies incorporated into the A300 were many and truly set the stage for a new generation of modern airliners. Some of these include:

• First use fibreglass reinforced plastics for the wing leading and trailing edges.
• Redesigned wing to allow steeper climb out.
• First to use wind shear warning systems.
• Advanced autopilot.
• Electrically controlled braking.
• Cockpit redesign to remove the need for the flight engineer.
• Centre of gravity control by pumping fuel to different locations around the aircraft.
• Electrical control of secondary flight systems.

A300 Powerplant

The A300 was powered by two underwing turbofan jet engines. One of the factors that helped keep down the development costs of the A300 was that a new engine did not need to be developed. The underwing engine pods were designed so that engine types were interchangeable and quite capable of accommodating the Rolls Royce RB211 and Pratt and Whitney JT9D, both of which were developed for the original Boeing 747.  To sweeten the offering for the U.S. Airbus opted for a third offering in the form of the General Electric CF6-50. It was decided to go this way as the Rolls Royce RB207 was not progressing due to Rolls Royce concentrating their efforts on the RB211.

Airbus Manufacturing System

The site for the construction of the Airbus A300 was Toulouse-Blagnac. Here Airbus maintained a just in time system where components would arrive at the factory just as they were needed. This eliminated the need to store these components onsite. As well as the major components mentioned above, parts would arrive from all over Europe and the world. For the larger parts, such as wings and fuselage sections, it was very cumbersome to try and bring them by road, so Airbus acquired two Super Guppies in the early 1970s to transport these parts by air. The Super Guppy was produced by Aero Spacelines and was based on the military version of the 1950s Boeing 377 Stratocruiser. This system is still employed by Airbus today, however, the parts are now transported by the Beluga and Beluga XL.

Selling the Airbus A300

Air France was the launch customer for the Airbus A300 with an order of six air-frames in September 1970. By the time Air France put their first A300 into service in May of 1974, Airbus was finding it hard to get customers for their launch aircraft. The oil crisis of 1973 caused an aviation downturn and airlines had trouble filling their existing aircraft at the higher prices demanded by more expensive oil. This put a stop to spending money on newer aircraft, no matter how economical they might be. To broaden its market base, like British pop groups, Airbus knew it had to break into the North American market. Here, they were fighting against an American perception of European plane makers, that they produced high performance but low dependability products.

To highlight the dependability of the Airbus A300, Airbus decided to let the world’s only wide-body twin-engine airliner prove itself to its American doubters.  In September 1973 the A300 embarked on a six-week tour of North America. To get there, they flew from Toulouse to Dakar and then via Brazil to Florida. This tour allowed airline executives and financiers to get a first-hand look and feel of the A300. One of those was Frank Borman of Eastern Airlines which was one of the Big Four in the U.S.

It was becoming evident that the concept of a wide-body short-haul jet might not be what the market was looking for. Airlines who flew the A300 were finding they were having to reduce the frequency of flights so that they could fill the larger jet up. This made the airlines that flew more frequent narrow-body services more popular due to their greater choice of departure times. The attraction of wide-body comfort was not enough of a drawcard. Sales were such that production was dropped to one aircraft every two months with four white-tailed aircraft kept in storage.

The A300 came into its own in 1977 when the FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) changed the restrictions for ETOPS which stands for Extended Range Twin Operations (or Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim). This ruling governed the way passenger jets could fly over water and was the reason that in the U.S. the market was dominated by the tri-jets Lockheed L1011 Tristar and McDonnell Douglas DC-10. With the higher proven reliability of the A300, certification was granted for it to fly further from an available airfield than previously enjoyed by any twin airliner. This opened up a whole new market for water medium-haul flights.

Sources:

https://modernairliners.com/airbus-a300/

https://www.airbus.com/en/who-we-are/our-history/commercial-aircraft-history/first-order-first-flight-1970-1972/a300-the