Birth of the Airbus Family: The A310

The Airbus A310 prototype takes flight on 3 April 1982.

In the days following the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur War in Middle East in October that year, the oil producing nations of the Middle East responded to American materiel support of Israel with an oil embargo that sparked a worldwide economic crisis as the price of oil abruptly shot upwards from $3/barrel to over $12/barrel in a short period of time. As a result, the airline industry worldwide embraced fuel efficiency as the new driver for future aircraft designs. While there were high-bypass ratio turbofans that powered the new widebody designs that were entering service (Boeing 747, Douglas DC-10, and Lockheed L-1011 Tristar), turbojets and low-bypass ratio turbofans were still commonplace in the short to medium-haul fleets worldwide. Many airlines indicated to the major manufacturers that there was a market need for a fuel-efficient aircraft in the 150-200 seat range over short to medium haul ranges. Of the big three manufacturers in the United States who dominated the world commercial airliner market, Boeing's plans were the most ambitious with the launch of not just one aircraft, but two aircraft with a common cockpit with the Boeing 757 and 767. It was in many ways the biggest gamble Boeing had ever undertaken, bigger than building the Dash 80 demonstrator that led to the 707 and even bigger than the launch of the 747 ten years earlier. News of Boeing's plans put pressure on Airbus Industrie to respond as all it had produced by that point was the A300. While there were a range of A300 variants with varying engines, payload and fuel capacities, they were all still essentially the same aircraft and hardly a family of aircraft. Two of the primary founders of Airbus and their heads, Roger Béteille (technical director) and Henri Ziegler (general manager), strongly believed that Airbus needed to emulate Boeing's strategy of building a whole family of different aircraft for different markets if the whole enterprise was to have a future beyond the A300. Boeing's idea for commonality with the 757 and 767 designs resonated with the Airbus team who was commonality among varied designs as a way of proving value to the airline customers, not to mention it would be a strong incentive for an Airbus customer to stay loyal to Airbus in the future.

Part of the problem Béteille and Ziegler faced was that most of the Airbus consortium partners saw the A300 as the end result of cooperation instead of the starting point for future cooperation. A lot of that was driven by the atmosphere of fiscal austerity of the 1970s in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis- Airbus' partner nations were hesitant of putting up more money into the venture, particularly when Airbus was still a bit player on the world market despite the success of the A300. In 1978, for example, Airbus delivered 15 aircraft, all of them A300s. That same year Boeing delivered 203 aircraft across three product lines- the 727, 737, and 747. In fact, it wouldn't be until 2003 that Airbus would deliver more aircraft in a single year than Boeing. When Boeing launched the 757 and 767 programs, they were also capitalizing on market vulnerabilities experienced by McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed in the wake of their trijet programs- Airbus wasn't really on Boeing's radar screen at the time. Despite the market effects on McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed, they were still delivering aircraft as well which were entering service on top of Boeing's numbers. You can imagine what a tall order it was for Béteille and Ziegler to convince the Airbus consortium partners that there was value and potential for the long haul beyond the A300 at a time when they were only building less than 5% of the world's commercial jetliners. It wasn't until mid-1975 that the board of Airbus Industrie endorsed the plan for a family of aircraft- and that endorsement is a testament to the persuasive powers of Roger Béteille and Henri Ziegler. In his book Close to the Sun: How Airbus Challenged America's Dominance of the Skies, author Stephen Aris calls that 1975 decision as the most critical decision in Airbus' history. If Airbus failed, then it was only one aircraft, the A300, that failed. But if they became successful, then that one aircraft wouldn't be enough. The leadership of Airbus Industrie by that point had proven themselves remarkably adept in getting the A300 into production and to market while balancing the interests of the partner nations in the consortium. 

Winning a Swissair order was a strategic priority for Airbus

With the backing of the consortium to expand the Airbus product line beyond the A300, the next task at hand was to determine the configuration of the new addition. The first iteration dated back to the oil crisis of 1973 when A300 sales were near dormant (only four A300s were delivered in 1974). In response to what was seen as an evolving market for something smaller than the A300, what was designated the B10 was a minimum-change variant of the A300 that had a shorter fuselage but the same wing and empennage as the larger aircraft. However, the B10 proposal created a significant amount of discord at all levels of Airbus as the consortium partners argued whether it was needed or not. Lufthansa in particular was keen for a smaller A300 derivative and this had gotten the support of Swissair. In those days, Swissair was one of those flagship customers every commercial airframe builder wanted as a customer. They were a tough customer known to be one of the most difficult airlines to negotiate with- but a Swissair order was badge of prestige for any commercial aircraft design and with Swissair now allying with Lufthansa on interest for a smaller A300 derivative, winning Swissair as a launch customer soon became one of Airbus' primary strategic goals. 

By the time the two airlines were briefed on the B10 proposal, Boeing was well on its way to launching the 757/767 program and compared to those aircraft, the B10 had no fans with either Lufthansa or Swissair. Their objections of the proposal stemmed from two points- the first one was that by the time of proposed service entry, the B10 design would be based on technology and a design that was at least a decade old and more importantly, it had a worse payload fraction than the A300. The payload fraction is one way of measuring an aircraft's efficiency- how much payload can it carry compared to its weight. Since the B10 design had a shorter fuselage married to the A300's wings, it had less passengers (therefore less revenue) to offset the costs of carrying a heavier wing structure. This is one of the reasons why shrinks of commercial airframes tend to not do well in the market- like the A318, 737-500, or 747SP, for example. If the B10 proposal was ever going to get off the drawing board, it needed a lighter wing and whole host of improvements over the A300 to win over the airlines who were being offered the latest in technology with the 757/767. In an unusual twist of history, the prospect of trans-Atlantic cooperation offered an potential answer to Airbus' dilemma. Why not combine Airbus' growing widebody fuselage expertise with the technology and industrial muscle of the United States? The first feelers on such an idea came from McDonnell Douglas in the spring of 1975 for a joint venture for a 200-seat design called the DC-X-200. McDonnell Douglas had long been considering a twin-engine version of the DC-10 and the DC-X-200 was the latest iteration along those lines. However, once discussions moved beyond engineering to management, the talks quickly collapsed. That summer another offer came from Boeing who thought there would be some synergies with the B10 proposal and the 767 program. Whether Boeing was serious or just trying to distract Airbus is still a source of debate to this day, but the proposal would have consisted of the A300-based fuselage and 767 wings and empennage. At the end of the day, however, Airbus lost interest as it became apparent that they would end up a Boeing subcontractor in the joint venture. 

Lufthansa was an early A300 customer who drove the design of the A310.

Still keen to win over Lufthansa and Swissair, Airbus decided to follow as Boeing had done with the 757/767 and go with a two-crew flight deck and CRT displays. That would prove to be a relatively easy step to take but it still provoked the ire of the pilots' unions of several European carriers. The need for a new wing, however proved to continue to be problematic. I had posted previously that it had taken the personal intervention of a German politician, Franz Josef Strauss, to fund the A300's wing development and construction by Hawker Siddeley as a result of the British government's withdrawal from the Airbus consortium. Hawker was still the center of the most advanced wing design work in Europe and was in the process of merging with several other entities to form British Aerospace (BAe). With British Aerospace being majority owned by the government, there was considerable anguish at Airbus as to whether or not BAe would participate in the B10 project given the British pull out of the Airbus consortium in 1969.  When Hawker elected to remain an Airbus participant despite the pullout, they had absorbed a portion of the costs of wing development. Now that Hawker was part of BAe, no one was sure that the new entity was willing to front such costs again for the B10 project. Airbus decided at that point to turn to its partners for a wing design- Aerospatiale and VFW-Fokker each submitted wing designs and Roger Béteille was sure that whoever was chosen, it would be the end of Airbus as the other partner would feel jilted. As it turned out, neither was chosen- the German design was aerodynamically superior but the French design was structurally superior. A joint-wing design center was established to combine their efforts and word of this got back to BAe quite quickly that their replacement was in the works. 

The exact political machinations in the UK that resulted will be the subject of a future blog article, but they were contentious with pro-Airbus factions in the British government and those who favored a joint-venture with Boeing on the 757. At the end of the day, however, BAe did end up designing and fabricating the wing which was not only lighter, but was of supercritical section which made it not only more aerodynamically efficient but also offset the smaller size with a deeper airfoil section which offered more fuel capacity. Getting the wing also meant that the British eventually rejoined the Airbus consortium with a 20% share. On 9 June 1978, Lufthansa and Swissair issued a joint specification for the new aircraft and within a month announced intentions of placing orders for what was launched as the Airbus A310. On 15 March 1979, Swissair announced its launch order for 10 aircraft and 10 options with plans to use the A310 as a replacement for its legacy DC-9 fleet on its major intra-European routes. Lufthansa quickly followed with an order for 10 aircraft and soon after Air France and Iberia also placed orders, assuring the production and success of the A310. When the A310 prototype flew, it would later wear Swissair's colors on the right side and Lufthansa's colors on the left side. Many of the advances of the A310 were later incorporated into an upgrade of the A300, the A300-600. 

Further reading: 

How American Airlines Shaped the A300

How Rolls Royce Scuttled British Participation in Airbus

The Early Days of Airbus Industrie and How the A300 Got Its Name

Franz Josef Strauss: The Bavarian Politician Who Saved Airbus
How a Lot of Airbus Jets Were Born on Boeing Wings

Related reading:

American Airlines Picks the DC-10 (American's pick of the DC-10 is intertwined with the early history of Airbus)

Source: Close to the Sun: How Airbus Challenged America's Domination of the Skies by Stephen Aris. Agate Books, 2002, pp 90-95. Photos: Wikipedia

Flying High This Past Week: 23 March-29 March

Don't forget that the new URL for TAILS THROUGH TIME is now www.tailsthroughtime.com. The old blogspot URL will still work, though. Consider it a quick NOTAM! I suppose a sign you've moved up in the blogosphere is when a Wikipedia article lists one of your articles as a source! It was an Wikipedia entry on the Pratt & Whitney J58 engine that powered the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird and my blog article on the Mach 3 Phantom proposal is listed as a reference in the sources. This past week was one of the unusual weeks that two articles get posted in a week, so obviously we'll lead off with those two articles on this week's edition of Flying High This Past Week: 

• The Rise and Fall of Mohawk Airlines and Opening the Door for Frank Lorenzo: Mohawk Airlines began operations in 1944 as Robinson Air Lines, connecting Ithaca, New York, with Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. By 1952 one of the pilots at Robinson eventually took over the airline and renamed it Mohawk following an employee contest for a new name. Mohawk and its new president, Bob Peach, were legendary among local service carriers as they were the first of the second tier of airlines to operate pure jet equipment and it was Peach's determination to operate pure jets that gained him the respect of his peers in the industry. Unfortunately circumstances would doom Mohawk to the point that it had to choose between joining its long time rival, Allegheny Airlines, or a young smooth talking New York businessman whose name became infamous in the US airline industry- Frank Lorenzo. 
• Proving the Harrier Carrier: The idea of a V/STOL equipped light carrier that is sort of like the modern day equivalent of the light escort carriers of the Second World War had its genesis in the austere budgetary environment that came at the end of the Vietnam War. The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, championed a cheaper alternative to the supercarrier called the Sea Control Ship that would use the new AV-8A Harrier as the sharp point of its spear. While the Navy never went forward with the SCS concept, many of our allies paid close attention and the US Marine Corps in particular would use the experience to base the Harrier and now Harrier II aboard the big deck amphibs of the "Gator Navy".
• Two's Company and Three's A Crowd: The Boeing 737-200 Flight Crew Controversy: This article from the week before last is still getting plenty of hits. I suppose that we are all looking at the number of crew in the flight deck with a different eye these days in light of the Germanwings tragedy. 
• Operation Teaball: Network-Centric Real-Time Intelligence in Vietnam: While the tools the US military used to restore the fighting effectiveness of its combat pilots are varied, one of the more interesting tools in the renaissance of the fighter pilot in the skies over Vietnam was the use of real-time intelligence to increase the situational awareness of pilots who were operating in the skies over North Vietnam.
• The Early Days of Airbus Industrie and How the A300 Got Its Name: I don't know what interests me more- the political machinations of 1960s Europe that led to the formation of Airbus or the fact that the A300 designation sprang out of a light hearted joke. Given the juggernaut that Airbus has become in the world commercial aircraft market, it's beginnings were much less assured and much more tenuous at best. 
• How American Airlines Shaped the A300: Related to the prior linked article on the early days of Airbus Industrie, even though American Airlines didn't operate the Airbus A300 until April 1988 as the launch customer for the A300-600R variant, one of its VPs, Frank Kolk, back in the 1960s had a tremendous influence in shaping the final design of the A300. The A300 was much closer to Kolk's specification for a widebody twin that he authored in 1967 than the eventual aircraft that sprang from Kolk's requirements, the Douglas DC-10 and the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar. 
• The Ryan FR-1 Fireball and F2R Dark Shark: An Evolutionary Dead End: Probably the pinnacle of mixed-propulsion fighter aircraft, these two Ryan fighter designs of the Navy represented a rather simple but effective remedy to the shortfalls of jet engines in the immediate postwar era.

Remember that new blog articles are posted every five days. The next article will be going up on April 2nd, so stay tuned. And for those who missed it, this is last week's edition of Flying High This Past Week. 

The Early Days of Airbus Industrie and How the A300 Got Its Name

Roger Béteille, father of Airbus Industrie

The roots of the formation of Airbus Industrie are tied more to the abilities of one man more than any other individual in the early history of the Airbus consortium- Roger Béteille. A graduate of the prestigious École Polytechnique, he was the technical director of Sud-Aviation in the mid-1960s. Sud-Aviation produced the Caravelle and it was Béteille who was the director of the jet's flight test program. In postwar Europe prior to the formation of Airbus, the Caravelle was only one of two commercial aircraft programs to make money (the other being the BAC One-Eleven). He also worked closely with Hawker Siddeley on the Concorde program- this was an experience that unique among the French technocrats of the time, gave him a close working relationship and mutual respect of the British aerospace establishment. In the aerospace industry of France in those days, someone of Béteille's skills was unique given his flawless English, the respect afforded by the British engineering staff at Hawker, and his political skills in working with several European nations in the course of his career at Sud-Aviation. 

In the summer of 1966 there were three proposed commercial aviation projects that were commanding the attention of the European industry. The first one was the BAC Two-Eleven, a successor to the successful BAC One-Eleven. That summer BAC was riding high on the success of the One-Eleven which at the time was one of Britain's most successful and profitable aerospace programs. But it was already facing significant competition from the Douglas DC-9 and the Boeing 737 and BAC had been lobbying the British government for support to launch the Two-Eleven which would have been powered by a new engine Rolls-Royce was developing, the RB.211, that would also go to the Lockheed Tristar. The Two-Eleven was a larger development of the One-Eleven that for the most part, was intended to get British European Airways (BEA) to drop its interest in the Boeing 727-200. The problem with BAC was that it was heavily committed to the Concorde program and had little financial resources to devote to the further developing the Two-Eleven which is why they were keen on approximately $100 million in launch funding from the British government. 

Hawker-Breguet-Nord HBN 100

In the previous year (1965), the head of Breguet Aviation, Henri Ziegler (who later became Airbus's first president) had inked an agreement with fellow French firm Nord Aviation and Hawker Siddeley in the UK to jointly work on a widebody twin called the HBN 100 that was largely the product of Hawker's engineers at their Hatfield facility. The HBN 100 was to have two variants, one with a passenger capacity for 225 and a stretched one with a capacity for 260. The planned engines were to be either the Pratt & Whitney JT9D that was under development at the time for the Boeing 747 or the Rolls Royce RB.178 which was a three-shaft demonstrator engine called the "Super Conway" that eventually led to the RB.211. At the same time as the HBN 100, Sud-Aviation (Roger Béteille's firm) was working the Galion which was very similar in layout, appearance and size to the HBN 100. The Sud-Aviation Galion evolved from what had started out as an enlarged Caravelle. 

Sud Aviation Galion

In 1966 Béteille invited his friends from Hawker Siddeley to Sud Aviation's facility in Toulouse to see if the design work on the HBN 100 and the Galion might be aligned towards a common joint project. That invitation for Arthur Howes, who headed the Hawker team, to come to Toulouse is what gave birth to the Airbus. It soon become a joint program with engineers from all the involved companies shuttling down to Toulouse as needed as the designs of the Galion and the HBN 100 were more closely aligned. That December at a meeting in London, France, Great Britain, and West Germany- I'll soon get to how the Germans entered the picture- decided that a single consortium would build a widebody twin. At time time, Concorde had two production lines- one in France and one in the UK, and on top of the financial costs of the program, the duplication of effort was something Roger Béteille wished to avoid so that an attractively priced aircraft could be offered to the world's airlines. It was agreed that in exchange for Rolls Royce developing a new engine for their design, the Sud Aviation Galion would form the baseline design to work from with the HBN 100 being sidelined. 

It was obvious at the time that any joint effort would be spearheaded by Britain and France, the only Western European nations at the time that had the industrial capacity for large commercial aircraft design and production. But the West Germans were keeping an eye on the developments and the use of the name "Airbus" in reference to the nascent project actually came from them. Even though it was twenty years after the end of World War II, the German aircraft industry was still in shambles. Many legendary names like Messerschmitt and Dornier were still around, but even those entities were hollow shells of their former selves. What engineering staff hadn't left Germany after the war debated the future of their industry and decided the future lay in collaboration on a civil aircraft project. The year before Roger Béteille invited the British to meet in Toulouse, seven German aircraft companies (ATG Siebelwerke, Bolkow, Dornier, Flugzeug-union Sud, Hamburger Flugzeugbau, Messerschimitt and VFW) formed Studiengruppe Airbus (the Airbus Study Group) to determine what sort of aircraft the future airline market would need. It was this grouping of German companies that contributed the Airbus name to the young enterprise. It was at the following year's Farnborough Air Show that German participation was formalized. Up to that point, the Germans had been working on their own but it was decided that what the French and British had come up with baselined off the Sud Aviation Galion was a suitable candidate for their contribution to the effort. Officially becoming Airbus, each nation decided that one company from each nation would take the lead for that nation's contribution. Hawker Siddeley would lead the British contribution, Sud Aviation would lead the French contribution and the German Airbus Study Group was reorganized into a formal consortium of their own, Airbus AG, to lead the German contribution. 

But what to name this aircraft? Arthur Howes of Hawker Siddeley was partial to the name "Obelix" which was the giant in the Asterix series of comic books popular in those days. It was apparent, though, that the name had to be something that was essentially neutral to British, French and German interests. One evening at a dinner in Sud Aviation's Paris headquarters the upper level of management at Sud Aviation asked why a name for the aircraft hadn't been found yet. Different ideas were punted about before Howes himself spoke up as a joke and said "I propose we call it the HSA 300" and the room laughed as "HSA" was the initials of Hawker Siddeley Aviation. But Howes continued "H- Hawker Siddeley, S- Sud Aviation, A- Airbus, and 300 because it's a nice round number." As everyone enjoyed Howes' joke, it suddenly donned on him- why don't we call it the A300? 300 is still a nice round number closest to the proposed design's seating capacity and if "A" was used, the aircraft would always appear before Boeing in any alphabetical listing. Howes idea proved popular and the nascent enterprise's new design would be marketed as the Airbus A300.

Further reading on this blog on the early history of Airbus:

How American Airlines Shaped the A300
How Rolls Royce Scuttled British Participation in Airbus

Related reading:
American Airlines Picks the DC-10 (American's pick of the DC-10 is intertwined with the early history of Airbus)

Source: Close to the Sun: How Airbus Challenged America's Domination of the Skies by Stephen Aris. Aurum Press, 2002, pp 6-11. Images: Wikipedia, Air International

How American Airlines Shaped the A300

In 1966, Sud Aviation and Breguet of France signed an agreement to cooperate with fellow French aircraft company Nord Aviation and British manufacturer Hawker Siddeley on a medium-range twin-aisle widebody aircraft with two engines tentatively designated HBN100. French President Charles De Gaulle asked Roger Beteille, an experienced technical manager who was the head of Alcatel Space, a French space systems company, to head the new joint venture. Beteille was one of the few French aeronautical managers who was fluent in English as well and highly regarded by the Hawker Siddeley team. For the next year, Beteille honed the HBN100 design to reflect the European marketplace as well as to accommodate the delicate political aspirations of each of the partners in the program. Size, capacity, range and even engine options were hammered out.

By 1967 Beteille was aware of the coming widebody competition in the United States with the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar. Both aircraft were trijets whereas the HBN100 design would be a twin jet of slightly smaller size. Rolls-Royce was already working with Lockheed to launch the RB.211 engine for the Tristar whilst working on the proposed RB.207 engine for the HBN100. At the time, the HBN100 design was larger than what it would be come as the A300 and Rolls-Royce was investing more time and energy in getting the RB.211 to market than the RB.207, something that troubled Beteille (it would also ultimately lead to Great Britain pulling out of the Airbus consortium). In a master stroke, Beteille convinced the partner nations to accept a smaller design that could use the same engines as were being developed for the Lockheed Tristar (the Rolls-Royce RB.211) and McDonnell Douglas DC-10 (the General Electric CF6). By getting the partners to agree to a smaller design, Beteille insured that Rolls-Royce wouldn't delay the program by dragging its feet on the more powerful RB.207 engine. Ultimately in 1969 Rolls-Royce abandoned development of the RB.207, so Beteille's decision was a prescient one. 

With the Tristar and the DC-10 flying first, the engines could be debugged and by the time what would become the A300 first flew, the engine choices would be operationally mature. It was a master stroke that saved the A300 at its most nascent stage. But Beteille was no gambler and deliberate in his calculations to keep the program moving. He often told his associates that it would be necessary to understand the American market as it was the biggest passenger market in the world. If Beteille's aircraft was going to be a success, they needed to make it in the United States as well. The airlines of the United States at the time were the operational envy of the world and Beteille decided he needed to meet with both United and American, as both airlines were known for the technical expertise and operational efficiency. And it didn't hurt that both airlines were launching the DC-10 which was powered by the same GE CF6 engine that Beteille wanted as an option on the A300. 

I had posted earlier about American Airlines' selection of the DC-10 and how American had laid out the original specifications for a widebody twin. The other airlines briefed wanted either three engines or four engines and American was the only airline who wanted only two engines. After meeting with United Airlines in San Francisco, Beteille met with Frank Kolk, American Airlines' VP for Development Engineering who originally authored the specifications that led to the DC-10. When Beteille met with Kolk, the tough-talking Texan admitted that he was disappointed that the DC-10 would have three engines as he would have much preferred a widebody twinjet. Neither McDonnell Douglas or Lockheed was interested in a twinjet and Kolk was very enthusiastic to meet with a team that shared his vision for widebody twin despite American's launch of the DC-10. In their discussions, Kolk discussed in detail what American wanted and its reasons for wanting a twinjet (fuel economy, operating economics, lower price per aircraft given that engines can amount to 35-40% of the cost of a new jet). Knowing what Beteille had planned, Kolk shared the original specifications with him and Beteille quickly returned to Europe and used American's specification and results of his discussion with Frank Kolk to nail down the final configuration and operating parameters of the A300. 

On 11 December 1968, the newly-formed Airbus Industrie revealed its Airbus A300B design to the aviation world. To this day Roger Beteille believes that it was the advice and discussions with Frank Kolk that made the A300 so successful that it formed the basis of the later A310, A330 and A340 jetliners. Ironically, it wasn't until April 1988 that American Airlines took delivery as the launch customer of the extended range A300-600R that was recently retired after over 20 years of service with American. Despite already having the Boeing 767-200/300 in the fleet, the A300 in its penultimate incarnation did eventually serve with Frank Kolk's airline!

Source: Flight of the Titans: Boeing, Airbus, and the Battle for the Future of Air Travel by Kenny Kemp. Virgin Books, 2006, p71-77.