Airbus A330, is undoubtedly one of Airbus’ masterpiece, and well-marketed globally. It is a short to medium range, wide-body family of aircraft manufactured by Airbus between 1972 and the present. The A300 was the first twin-engined widebody airliner in the world. It inspired Boeing twins such as Boeing 767 and 777 and paved the way for ETOPS flights.

All of these made the A300 a perfect substitute for the widebody tri-jets such as McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and Lockheed L-1011 for short to medium routes. On the early versions, Airbus even used the same engines and similar major systems as the DC-10. Asian airlines bought the concept and used the early A300s as a complement to the widebody tri-jets on such routes.

Advanced technology, enough said. Later A300s incorporated other advanced features which was 2-man-crew by automating the flight engineer’s functions, an industry first. Not so many people that this advanced feature was a request made by Garuda Indonesia, an idea proposed by B. J. Habibie, who at that time was Indonesia’s Minister of Research and Technology.

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