Plastics News Europe - September 2019 - 5

design landmark

airbus a300
T

- agreed to work together to develop
such a craft. The fuselage would be
engineered in Germany, the cockpit
and control systems in France, the
wings in the UK, the control surfaces
in the Netherlands and the tailplane
in Spain.
This European challenger had to
be more advanced than its US counterparts if it were to crack the global
market. And it was genuinely innovative: the first commercial jet to have
plastic composite components (GFRP
on the tail fin's leading and trailing
edges), the first twin-engined widebody (with inherently lower fuel burn
and maintenance costs than three- or
four-engined competitors) and the
first supercritical airfoil on a passenger jet. By the time it debuted in September 1972, however, the A300's
undoubted technical superiority was
overshadowed by its almost empty
order book.
In 1973 Airbus flew an A300 on a
sales tour to nearly 40 US airports but
- despite its US-made engines - American airlines thought flying a plane
from an untested European supplier
would be a hard sell for their passengers. Zero orders were placed between

The A300 was the first passenger jet to use
composite materials in its construction

December 1975 and May 1977, completed aircraft were left unsold and
the project seemed in jeopardy. So Airbus had an audacious - if desperate -
plan: it gave Eastern Airlines four
A300s on loan for six months. More
efficient and easier to maintain than
any other aircraft in the US carrier's
fleet, the A300 proved itself. In 1978
Eastern ordered 23 of the jets. It would
later buy another 11 and total sales of
the type would run to 561.

Design Landmark
is researched and
written by James
Snodgrass

Static Generation Technology
...for IML & Pinning Applications

sales@meech.com

SEPTEMBER 2019

+44(0)1993 706700

www.meech.com

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oday Airbus and Boeing have a
virtual duopoly in commercial
jets. Airbus is thriving and has a
full complement of jets for sale: from
the smallest A220 series (inherited
from Bombardier) to the single-aisle
A320 series and the widebody A330
and A350 series (though it might
want to forget the soon-to-be-discontinued A380 "superjumbo"). But
it wasn't always this way.
In fact, the A300 was very nearly
the beginning and the end of Airbus.
By the mid-1960s, 80% of passenger
jets were US-made, whether by Boeing or by its smaller rivals Lockheed
and McDonnell Douglas. European
narrowbody passenger jets such as
France's Sud Aviation Caravelle and
Britain's BAC One-Eleven sold reasonably well (over 200 units each) but
the European industry was too fragmented to compete.
In 1967, addressing a need for
larger aircraft to fly on point-to-point
medium haul routes - and realising
that the market was too small for all
European manufacturers to go it
alone - a consortium of companies
from France, West Germany, the UK
- and later Spain and the Netherlands

(1972)

http://www.meech.com

Plastics News Europe - September 2019

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