The GeNX is perfectly sized for the A330.
The 222 inch fuselage compares very favorably with the B787 fuselage of 226 inches.
The 330 line is hot, very hot…….almost no development time/costs would be incurred vis a vis the all new A350, leading to a relatively quick service entry.
IMHO, the A350 will incur further delays.
Airbus is developing the A350 to counter the 777, not the 787. (if you doubt that statement, compare the wing area of the 777/A350) If the A330 is not re-engined, Airbus will have no true competitor to the smaller 787.
The 15% (or thereabouts) less fuel burn of the GeNX would add considerably to the payload/range of the A330 without requiring the heavy spar and center gear of the longer range A340’s. With GeNX, the A330 could become a “real” 13-13.5 hour airplane. I say “real” because an A330-200 filled up with 245,000 lbs of fuel can’t carry any payload, as the empty weight is about 270,000 lbs and MTOW is only 513,700 lbs.
In short, a GeNX powered A330 would be a low risk, low cost way to undercut the 787, and Airbus could do such a program quickly.
Does Airbus have the engineering resources to do the A350, A320NEO and A330NEO simultaneously? Apparently not.
By: garryrussell - 29th December 2011 at 00:06
As mentioned above a new technology version of the 330 was basically what the 350 was.
Airbus were all but lynched over it and the airlines told them in no uncertain terms that wanted an all new design.
By: Amiga500 - 5th December 2011 at 11:26
Hmmm… I can’t say for certain but I’d be very unconvinced.
Basically the same aircraft (wing/fuselage) had 2/4 engines between A330/A340 (initial versions) – that will have a large impact on the weight (not load – although that will be affected too) distribution across the wing on ground/landing.
The bending moment from outer engine of the A340 would have loaded the inner wing spars heavier upon landing than the single engine of the A330, so a single larger engine shouldn’t be insurmountable I’d think.
In flight, there would be no tangible differences, a slight relief of bending moment between the engines, but thats it.
If sticking on a bigger single engine, maybe a couple of local ribs would need strengthening for the pylon mounting, but thats no big deal.
By: Bmused55 - 5th December 2011 at 08:02
I reade somewhere a while back that the A330 is a victim of it’s own success, re getting re-engined.
Apparently it’s so good at what it does because it’s structure is so optimised with extremely tight tolerances.
Due to this, there are limits any major modifications that can be made. To make it worth while, it would have to be re-engineered, which is apparently why the re-engined A330 originally pitched against the 787 was a non starter.
Not sure any of that is true though. Made interesting reading.
By: Amiga500 - 2nd December 2011 at 22:18
In short, a GeNX powered A330 would be a low risk, low cost way to undercut the 787, and Airbus could do such a program quickly.
I assure you they could not.
Airbus (like Boeing) currently have a shortage of engineers.
As I’m sure your aware; the original A350 was an A330 fuselage with a new wing/engine combination. The airlines completely rejected it.
The A350-800 will underlap the A330-300 while being somewhat above the A330-200.
Perhaps CPD will look at a re-engine in the future, especially considering the life of the A330F. But Airbus have their hands full until A350 or A320 re-engine are complete (that is A350 all variants or A319/20/21 all finished).
Definitely not saying it can’t or won’t happen, just saying it’ll def not happen quickly. 2018 at a minimum unless they are willing to put other projects on the back-burner.
By: Arabella-Cox - 2nd December 2011 at 20:13
Airbus looked into this originally when the 787 came out, but it was unanimously rejected by the airlines. Besides, since the 787 came out, the A330 has got a decent backlog that will last until after the A350 enters service.
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December 2, 2011 at 3:17 pm