David Learmount/TOULOUSE
Airbus Industrie is to challenge Boeing's 777-300 stretch with an enlarged, rewinged A340 which carries as many passengers and flies further, says the European consortium's A330/ A340 commercial programme manager David Pound.
The European consortium is effectively launching the -500 and-600 variants of the A340 with an in-service date of 2000.
One crucial outstanding question is whether current negotiations between Airbus and General Electric will result in exclusive GE rights to develop a power plant.
The engine under discussion, says Pound, is "a scaled-down GE90 using lower-temperature materials-which will offer 9% better fuel efficiency than current engines with the same thrust". The thrust bracket is 222-267kN (50,000-60,000lb). Airbus says that the aircraft will have "increased design cruise speed and improved speed flexibility compared to current A340s".
Pound claims that Airbus has upped the size of the A330/A340's "generic market" by 40% by introducing two new stretches and an enlarged wing - the -500 ultra-long-haul version, effectively a very high-gross-weight version of the current A340-300, and the highly-stretched -600, whose cabin capacity is increased by 25%. He says that there are no orders yet, but the interest shown has convinced Airbus that it should go ahead with the programme.
The A340-600 in a three-class layout will seat 372 passengers and carry a full payload from Europe to the US West Coast, says Airbus. Range is listed as 13,690km (7,400nm). By comparison, the current high-gross- weight A340-300 carries 295 passengers 13,505km. The three-class A340-500, hardly bigger than the -300, will fly 316 passengers 15,355km.
The main structural/engineering changes (see diagram) to the basic A340-300 design entail three fuselage inserts in the -500 and the -600. The wing is given a tapered wing-box insert to increase wing area/fuel capacity, and a 1.6m wing extension, with slat 7 also lengthened appropriately.
The fin is to be the same as that of the new A330-200, which is larger than those on current A340s. The horizontal stabilisers are to be enlarged in span and chord.
The extra weight will be supported by strengthening the centre gear and making it a four-wheeler rather than a two-wheel bogie.
Source: Flight International
