Making a 1000 of anything big like aircraft is an impressive achievement, and Airbus today announced it has rolled out and delivered its 1000th Airbus A330.
The 1000th Aircraft is for Cathay Pacific, and adorned as such.
Images – Airbus SAS –
This A330-300 will make up part of cadre of 56 A330’s that Cathay Pacific and Dragonair own – making them the biggest operator of the type.
The plane has also developed since the first delivery, with a possible range of 7,250 nautical miles or 13,420 km. Inside, the plane is fitted out with Cathay’s latest cabin.
There are two variants of the A330 – the A330-300 (Payload optimised) and the A330-200 (range optimised). Even the most maddening operator will find it difficult to mess up an A330 on the inside – even in Economy which normally is delivered in a lovely 2-4-2 format (unless they go 3-3-3 in it – Air Transat, Air Asia X come to mind).
For Cathay Pacific, the A330 is the backbone of its mid-haul fleet, with reliability, flexibility and good economics to run this aircraft on mid-haul segments.
Cathay Pacific operate they operate 38 A330-300’s and 11 A340 wide body aircraft, whilst DragonWings operate 18 A330-300’s and 21 Airbus A320 Family aircraft. The group has 10 more A330’s to be delivered in the current order, with 48 Airbus A350XWB’s of varying configurations to come.
From a personal/passenger viewpoint, I love A330’s. They offer a great ride (be in the back or near the front of the plane), the 2-4-2 seating in economy is just comfortable, and both versions have the legs to go for miles. It’s good to see that some airlines have seen the benefit of operating them.