page_title: Airbus A330
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Airbus A330 / Design
caption_attribution_description: English: Cyprus Airways Airbus A330-200 (5B-DBS) takes off from London Heathrow Airport, England. The undercarriages have finished retracting.
context_page_description: The Airbus A330 is a wide-body airliner made by Airbus.
  In the mid-1970s, Airbus conceived several derivatives of the A300, its first airliner, and developed the A330 twinjet in parallel with the A340 quadjet.
  In June 1987, Airbus launched both designs with their first orders.
  The A330-300, the first variant, took its maiden flight in November 1992 and entered service with Air Inter in January 1994.
  The slightly shorter A330-200 variant followed in 1998.
  In 2014, Airbus launched the A330neo, re-engined with Trent 7000 turbofans, which entered service in November 2018.
  The A330 shares its airframe with the early A340 variants, having two engines instead of four, two main landing gear legs instead of three, lower weights and slightly different lengths.
  Both airliners have fly-by-wire controls, which was first introduced on the A320, as well as a similar glass cockpit.
  The A330 was Airbus's first airliner to offer a choice of three engines: the General Electric CF6, Pratt & Whitney PW4000, or the Rolls-Royce Trent 700.
  The A330-300 has a range of 11,750 km or 6,350 nmi with 277 passengers, while the shorter A330-200 can cover 13,450 km or 7,250 nmi with 247 passengers.
context_section_description: The A330 is a medium-size, wide-body aircraft, with two engines suspended on pylons under the wings. A two-wheel nose undercarriage and two four-wheel bogie main legs built by Messier-Dowty support the aeroplane on the ground. Its MTOW grew from 212 tonnes (467,000 lb) at introduction to 242 tonnes (534,000 lb) in 2015, enhancing its payload-range performance. John Leahy states that it was intentionally being held down in takeoff weight and performance because Airbus avoided overlapping with the A340.
  The airframe of the A330 features a low-wing lever monoplane with a wing virtually identical to that of the A340-200/300. On the A330-300, one engine is installed at the inboard pylon while the outboard pylon position is not used; for the A340-300, both engine pylons are used, which allows the A340-300 wing to sustain a higher (wing limited) MTOW. This is as the A340's two engines at each wing provide a more equal force distribution (engine weight) over the wing, while also the total engine weight counteracting moment is located more outboard with more engine weight located further outboard on the wing, hence the wing root bending moment with equal TOW is less on the A340-300 than on the A330-300. The wings were designed and manufactured by BAe, which developed a long slender wing with a very high aspect ratio to provide high aerodynamic efficiency.
  The wing is swept back at 30 degrees and, along with other design features, allows a maximum operating Mach number of 0.86. To reach a long span and high aspect ratio without a large weight penalty, the wing has relatively high Thickness-to-chord ratio of 11.8% or 12.8%. Jet airliners have Thickness-to-chord ratios ranging from 9.4% (MD-11 or Boeing 747) to 13% (Avro RJ or 737 Classic). Each wing also has a 2.74 m (9 ft 0 in) tall winglet instead of the wingtip fences found on earlier Airbus aircraft.
  The shared wing design with the A340 allowed the A330 to incorporate aerodynamic features developed for the former aircraft. The failure of International Aero Engines' radical ultra-high-bypass V2500 "SuperFan", which had promised around 15 per cent fuel burn reduction for the A340, led to multiple enhancements including wing upgrades to compensate. Originally designed with a 56 m (180 ft) span, the wing was later extended to 58.6 m (190 ft) and finally to 60.3 m (200 ft). At 60.3 m (200 ft), the wingspan is similar to that of the larger Boeing 747-200, but with 35 percent less wing area.
  The A330 and A340 fuselage is based on that of the Airbus A300-600, with many common parts, and has the same external and cabin width: 5.64 m (19 ft) and 5.26 m (17 ft). Typical seating arrangements are 2–2–2 six-abreast in business class and 2–4–2 eight-abreast in economy class. The fin, rudder, elevators, horizontal tail plane are used as fuel tank, flaps, ailerons and spoilers; they are made of composite materials, making 10% of the structure weight. When necessary, the A330 uses the Honeywell 331–350C auxiliary power unit (APU) to provide pneumatics and electrical power.
  The A330 shares the same glass cockpit flight deck layout as the A320 and the A340, featuring electronic instrument displays rather than mechanical gauges. Instead of a conventional control yoke, the flight deck features side-stick controls, six main displays, and the Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS), which covers navigation and flight displays, as well as the Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitor (ECAM). Apart from the flight deck, the A330 also has the fly-by-wire system common to the A320 family, the A340, the A350, and the A380. It also features three primary and two secondary flight control systems, as well as a flight envelope limit protection system which prevents maneuvers from exceeding the aircraft's aerodynamic and structural limits.
caption: A330-200 planform view, showing its 10.06 wing aspect ratio and 30° wing sweep
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