Airbus A300
1972 jet airliner family
The Airbus A300 is Airbus' first production aircraft and the world's first twin-engine, wide-body airliner. It was developed by Airbus Industrie GIE, now merged into Airbus, and manufactured from 1971 to 2007.
In September 1967, aircraft manufacturers in France, West Germany and the United Kingdom signed an initial memorandum of understanding to collaborate to develop an innovative large airliner. The French and West Germans reached a firm agreement on 29 May 1969, after the British withdrew from the project on 10 April 1969. A new collaborative aerospace company, Airbus Industrie GIE, was formally created on 18 December 1970 to develop and produce it. The A300 prototype first flew on 28 October 1972.
The first twin-engine widebody airliner, the A300 typically seats 247 passengers in two classes over a range of 5,375 to 7,500 km (2,902 to 4,050 nmi; 3,340 to 4,660 mi).
Initial variants are powered by General Electric CF6-50 or Pratt & Whitney JT9D turbofans and have a three-crew flight deck. The improved A300-600 has a two-crew cockpit and updated CF6-80C2 or PW4000 engines; it made its first flight on 8 July 1983 and entered service later that year. The A300 is the basis of the smaller A310 (first flown in 1982) and was adapted in a freighter version.
The public source identifies “Airbus A300” as 1972 jet airliner family. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Airbus, A300 and airliner.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6437. The Library of Congress control number is sh2005001895. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 2007, 1967 and 1969.
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This entry incorporates text from “Airbus A300” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.