trials at Windhoek (Namibia) and Kinshasa
(today’s Democratic Republic of Congo, then
known as Zaire).
On March 15, 1974, the A300 was
certi ed in Europe after 1,585 hours of test
ying – 1,205 hours for development and
certi cation and 380 hours for route-proving,
training and sales and demonstration ying.
US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
certi cation followed on May 30.INTO SERVICE
Airbus Industrie designated the production
version the A300B2 which had a range of
1,850nm (3,430km). The rst revenue ights
of an A300, and indeed any Airbus, took
place when Air France ew two round trips
from Paris CDG to London Heathrow on May
23, 1974. With the delivery of its second and
third machines, Nice, Dusseldorf and Milan
soon followed.The second operator was Trans
European Airways in Belgium, which
received the A300B1 prototype, the only
B1 to enter service, followed by Korean Air
Lines (today Korean Air), which was the rst
non-European customer.
Meanwhile, Air Siam ew the type from
its base at Bangkok to destinations such
as Singapore, Jakarta and Hong Kong. But
despite all the hype, initial sales were slow
and the situation did not look like improving.
In a bid to ramp up business, Henri Ziegler
went to India in 1975 to secure an order from
Indian Airlines. He was born there and was
able to produce a photograph of himself as a
boy with Gandhi!
Three orders and three options were
signed as the A300 was well suited to
the busy domestic services within India.
Interestingly, most of Asia had no rules about
how far twin-engine transports could y from
land, so early A300s made overwater trips
across the Arabian Sea to the Persian Gulf
and out over the Bay of Bengal, long before
regulated Extended Range Twin Operations
(ETOPS) services began plying the North
Atlantic route a decade later.
The major production version was the
A300B4 which featured a centre fuel tank,
which gave increased range of 3,400nm
(6,300km), and new wing root Krüger aps.
The B4 received certi cation on March
26, 1975, but sales were still proving a
problem and December that year marked
the beginning of an 18-month drought during
which Airbus did not sell a single airliner.
A focus on Asia nally resulted in a sale to
Thai Airways for two aircraft, but when an
anticipated order from US major Western
Airlines did not materialise, the Airbus sales
team resorted to desperate measures.US BREAKTHROUGH
Bernard Lathiere, who took over from Henri
Ziegler in 1976, persuaded former astronaut
Frank Borman, CEO of US domestic
carrier Eastern Air Lines (at the time the
world’s largest airline outside the USSR),
to take four unsold A300s currently sitting
in Toulouse for a four-month trial period68 Aviation News incorporating Jets March 2017Above: Airbus has built over 17,000 jet airliners, and F-WUAB was the very rst. It was
the A300B1 prototype and undertook its maiden ight on October 28, 1972. Despite their
historic value, large widebody aircraft usually require too much space and maintenance to be
preserved, this signi cant example (reregistered as F-OCAZ) was scrapped at the end of the
1970s. AirTeamImages.com/Stephane Beillard
Below: The second A300B1 prototype was refurbished for passenger use after the completion of
the test programme and entered service with Belgian leisure carrier Trans European Airways. It ew
with this company until retirement in November 1990 and was then scrapped. Richard VandervordDomestic carrier Indian Airlines was an early user of the A300 and found it useful on busy trunk routes.
When the airline began operating regional services, such as to the Persian Gulf, it became the rst to
y a twin-engine airliner more than 60 minutes from land. This pioneered the use of widebody twins
on oceanic routes where they dominate today. AirTeamImages.com/Dr Frikkie Bekker66-71_a300DC.mf.indd 68 03/02/2017 17:46