Max Kingsley-Jones/TOULOUSE
Airbus Industrie's latest widebody, the long-range A330-200, had a successful maiden flight on 13 August, with the consortium's chief test pilot, William Wainwright, at the controls.
The initial General Electric CF6-80E1A4-powered version is scheduled to be certificated in March 1998, and to enter service with Canada 3000 Airlines the following month.
During the 4h 10min flight, Wainwright, along with the other five testcrew, which included test pilot Bernd Schäfer and flight engineers Jacky Joye, Roger Lignee and Jean Marie Mathios, took the aircraft to its maximum altitude of 41,000ft (12,500m), and flew it in basic and normal control modes. Initial testing in low-speed and high-speed configurations was also carried out. "We flew throughout the flight envelope from minimum to maximum speeds," says Wainwright.
The test programme, which will see the A330-200 certificated with all three of the "big-fan" engines, will last for 16 months and involve some 630 flight-test hours flown on six aircraft. The second development machine, which will be powered by Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines, will join the flight-test programme in December, and certification will follow in May 1998. The first aircraft will be re-engined with Rolls-Royce Trent 700 engines, and flight testing in this configuration will begin at the end of March 1998. This version should be certificated in December 1998.
The A330-200 is a short-fuselage, longer-range, development of the A330-300, offering a range with 253 passengers of up to 12,000km (6,450nm). Total orders, options and commitments for the new variant stand at 132 and, according to Airbus vice-president of marketing John Leahy, the consortium expects to sell 500-600 A330-200s over the next 20 years.
Meanwhile, Airbus believes that it is on target to launch the new long-range and higher-capacity A340-500 and -600 models in the fourth quarter of 1997. Development is proceeding following the commercial launch of the R-R Trent 500-powered aircraft in June. One refinement being made to the aircraft's design is a change to the stowage configuration of the new four-wheel centre undercarriage. "We have redesigned the centre gear bay so that the undercarriage now retracts and stows forward, in line with the two maingear bogeys, instead of aft," says Alan Pardoe, A330/A340 product marketing manager. "This change increases the rear cargo hold capacity by two pallet positions," he says.
Source: Flight International
