RE: Cyprus Airways A330

Up until a few years ago Airbus and Boeing had completely different design philosophies. The Americans built their planes like their cars and their women – big, strong and built to last. The downside of this is that they carried huge amounts of weight in their structure which meant that they had to use great big gas guzzling engine to propel them but heck, fuel was cheap. Airbus foresaw the fact that the accountant was becoming more and more important (are you happy now Mongu?) in the airlines management so they decided to try a different approach that would appeal to the money men. They calculated the minimum possibe safe structure required to do the job and invested in modern technology for weight saving (such as using fly by wire) and then used engines just big enough to meet performance requirements. This gives them a phenomenally low fuel burn. They also concentrated on establishing their own leasing program and won large orders which meant they could heavily discount. If the price of oil hadn’t risen I doubt Airbus would have fared so well but it has and they are now here to stay. One of their wisest moves was to tie in customers by the shrewd use of type commonality. This means that if airline A operates 737’s and airline B operates A320’s, if they both want a bigger aeroplane airline A buys the 757 and airline B buys the A321. Airline A has to send its pilots on a complete and expensive new type rating course and then those pilots cannot fly the 737 again in times of need without leaving the 757. Airline B’s pilots are automatically qualified to fly the A321 (as well as the A319 and A318, and only require a minimal conversion for the A330, A340 and probably the A380) and most importantly can interchange on a day to day basis.