page_title: Airbus
section_title: Designing the Airbus A300
hierarchical_section_title: Airbus / History / Designing the Airbus A300
caption_attribution_description: Eastern Airbus A300 at St Maarten Airport
context_page_description: Airbus SE is a company which makes aircraft. It is owned by EADS, a European aerospace company. Airbus has its headquarters in Blagnac, France.
  Airbus began as a consortium of aircraft makers called Airbus Industrie. Later, in 2001, it became a joint-stock company. It was owned by EADS and BAE Systems. BAE sold its part of the company to EADS on 13 October 2006, so EADS now completely owns the company.
  Around 55,000 people work for Airbus in sixteen places in four European Union countries: France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain. The final part of Airbus aircraft making is done in Toulouse, France; Hamburg, Germany; Seville, Spain; and, since 2009, Tianjin, China.
  Airbus makes and sells the first digital fly-by-wire airliner, the Airbus A320. Airbus also makes the biggest airliner in the world, the Airbus A380.
context_section_description: The Airbus A300 was to be the first aircraft which was designed, made and sold by Airbus Industrie. By 1967, the "A300" label was given an airliner which Airbus Industrie was thinking about making, with 320 seats and two engines. Roger Béteille was made the technical director of the A300 design. Béteille decided which companies would make which parts of the plane: France would make the cockpit, flight controls and part of the fuselage; Hawker Siddeley made the wings; Germany made part of the fuselage; the Dutch made the flaps and spoilers; and Spain made the horizontal tailplane. On 26 September 1967 the German, French and British governments signed an agreement in London, which allowed Airbus Industrie to continue designing the plane. Rolls-Royce made the engines.
  Airlines did not really want a 300+ seat Airbus A300, so Airbus Industrie made the A250 proposal. This later became the A300B, which had 250 seats and did not need a new engine design. This made the plane much cheaper to design, as the Rolls-Royce RB207 which would have been used in the A300 made up a lot of the costs. The RB207 had also had design problems and delays, since Rolls-Royce was concentrating on designing a different jet engine, the RB211, for the Lockheed L-1011 The A300B was smaller but lighter than its American rivals.
  In 1972, the A300 made its first flight. The first type of A300, the A300B2, began being used by airlines in 1974. However, not much attention was paid to the A300 because of the launch of Concorde. At first, the A300 was not very successful. However, airlines began to order more and more. Part of this was because of the Airbus Industrie CEO Bernard Lathière, who tried to sell the plane to airlines in America and Asia. By 1979, Airbus Industrie had 256 orders for the A300. Airbus Industrie had also designed a more advanced aircraft, the Airbus A310, the year before. It was the A320 in 1981 which made Airbus Industrie a very big aircraft maker. More than 400 orders were made for the A320 before it even flew. Only 15 were made for the A300 before it first flew.
caption: Eastern Air Lines was Airbus's first American customer. It ordered the Airbus A300 B4.
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