| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
The Airbus A320 is a short to medium range commercial passenger aircraft manufactured by Airbus Industrie. It is the best-selling passenger aircraft in the world (at 2003) and was the first airliner with a digital fly-by-wire flight control system, where the pilot controls flight surfaces through the use of electronic signals rather than mechanically with pulleys and hydraulic systems.
After the initial success of the A300, Airbus targeted the market segment that was occupied by the 1960s designed Boeing 727. Airbus designed an aircraft with a fuel burn of only around 50% of the 727.
The A320 first flew in 1984 and was commercially launched in 1988. Unlike the earlier Airbus A300, it sold strongly from the outset and has been the fastest-selling airliner in the world for several years.
Early on in its service lifetime, the A320 had several highly publicized crashes. The most notorious occurred on July 26, 1988, when an Air France A320 crashed during an airshow in Habsheim , France. While the crash was officially blamed on pilot error , the investigation left numerous unanswered questions. Switzerland's Institute of Police Forensic Evidence and Criminology later determined that the plane's flight data recorder had been substituted after the crash, throwing the entire investigation into doubt.
Most of these accidents were attributed to pilot error dealing with the innovative fly-by-wire system. As the airplane matured, the incidence of such accidents diminished and seems to have no impact on the airplane's huge popularity.
The new-technology items introduced include:
All these features help make the A320 family more economical airliners to operate relative to older designs.
The A320 has given rise to a family of aircraft which share a common design but are a little smaller (the A319), a lot smaller (the A318The Airbus A318 also known as the "Mini-Airbus," is a smaller version of the Airbus A320 aircraft, six meters shorter and 14 tons lighter than its predecessor. Pilots who are trained on other A320 variants (the A319, A320, and A321) can fly the A318 with), or a little larger (the A321). Passenger capacity is between 100 to 220. They compete with the Boeing 737The Boeing 737 is a popular short-to-medium range commercial passenger jet aircraft continuously manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes since 1967. Over 5,000 have been sold since its introduction in 1967, more than any other commercial airliner, and family and the Boeing 757-200. All have the same pilot type-rating.
Technically, the name "A320" only refers to the original mid-sized aircraft,but it is often informally used to indicate any of the A318/A319/A320/A321 family. All variants are ETOPSETOPS E xtended T win-engine OP eration S is an acronym for an International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) rule permitting newer twin-engined commercial air transports to fly routes that, at some points, are further than a distance of 60 minutes flyi rated.