The Airbus A330 is a wide-body aircraft developed and produced by Airbus.
Airbus began developing larger A300 derivatives in the mid-1970s, giving rise to the A330 twinjet as well as the A340 quadjet, and launched both designs alongside with their first orders in June 1987.
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 with Canada 3000 as the launch operator.
Airbus A330
Compared to the A330 twinjet (on ground), the heavier A340 (inflight) has four engines and a centre-line wheel bogie.
Rolls-Royce's Trent 700 features a mixed exhaust.
Pratt & Whitney's PW4000 has a more conventional unmixed exhaust.
A wide-body aircraft, also known as a twin-aisle aircraft and in the largest cases as a jumbo jet, is an airliner with a fuselage wide enough to accommodate two passenger aisles with seven or more seats abreast. The typical fuselage diameter is 5 to 6 m. In the typical wide-body economy cabin, passengers are seated seven to ten abreast, allowing a total capacity of 200 to 850 passengers. Seven-abreast aircraft typically seat 160 to 260 passengers, eight-abreast 250 to 380, nine- and ten-abreast 350 to 480. The largest wide-body aircraft are over 6 m (20 ft) wide, and can accommodate up to eleven passengers abreast in high-density configurations.
A narrow-body Boeing 737 of Lufthansa in front of a wide-body Boeing 777 of Emirates
A Boeing 747, the first wide-body passenger aircraft, operated by Pan Am, its launch customer
Three widebodies: KLM's Airbus A330 twinjet, McDonnell Douglas MD-11 trijet and Boeing 747-400 quadjet
An Airbus A300's cross-section, showing cargo, passenger, and overhead areas