The Airbus A300 first flew on 28 October 1972 and entered service with Air France in May 1974. It was the world's first twin-engine widebody airliner, and it came from a European consortium formed on the reasoning that no single European country could compete with Boeing alone.
Why Airbus existed
By the late 1960s American manufacturers dominated the airliner market almost completely. European national programmes — the Comet, the Caravelle, the VC10 — had each produced good aircraft in numbers too small to be commercially viable.
France, Germany and later Britain and Spain agreed to pool the work. Airbus Industrie was formed in 1970 as a groupement d'intérêt économique, a French legal structure that let separate national companies operate a joint programme without merging.
Components were built in different countries and flown to Toulouse for final assembly — initially in a converted Boeing 377 Guppy, an arrangement that looked improvised and worked.
The design bet
The A300 was designed around a specific and then-unfashionable idea: a widebody with two engines rather than three or four.
The market at the time assumed long-range widebodies needed three engines minimum, because of regulatory restrictions on twins over water and doubts about engine reliability. The A300 was aimed at high-density short and medium-haul routes in Europe, where those restrictions did not bind.
Two engines meant substantially lower fuel and maintenance costs than the DC-10 or TriStar on the routes it served. The reasoning turned out to be right, and it eventually applied everywhere as ETOPS rules relaxed.
The years nobody bought it
Early sales were dismal. Between 1974 and 1976 Airbus sold almost nothing, and unsold aircraft accumulated at Toulouse. The programme was widely written off as a politically motivated failure.
The turn came in 1978, when Eastern Air Lines took four A300s on a six-month free trial arranged by Airbus salesman Bernard Lathière. Eastern found the operating economics compelling and ordered 23. An American carrier buying European aircraft broke the psychological barrier, and orders followed.
What it started
The A300 established Airbus as a real manufacturer. The A310 followed, then the A320 in 1988 with digital fly-by-wire and side-stick controls, which changed how airliners are designed.
Airbus reached rough parity with Boeing in the 2000s and has periodically exceeded it since. The consortium formed because no European country could compete alone now competes as an equal.
A300 production ended in 2007 after 561 aircraft. Many still fly as freighters, and FedEx and UPS operate substantial fleets.