Air Transat Airbus A330 -342 C-GKTS CN111 . Taken On June 1 , 2005 Editorial Photo

The Airbus A330 is a wide-body aircraft developed and produced by Airbus. Airbus began developing larger A300 derivatives in the mid-1970s, giving rise to the A330 twinjet as well as the A340 quadjet, and launched both designs along with their first orders in June 1987. The A330-300, the first variant, took its maiden flight in November 1992 and entered service with Air Inter in January 1994. The slightly shorter A330-200 variant followed in 1998 with Canada 3000 as the launch operator.The A330 shares many underpinnings with the airframe of the early A340 variants, most notably the same fuselage and wing components, and by extension the same structure. However, the A330 has two main landing gear legs instead of three, lower weights, and slightly different lengths. Both airliners have fly-by-wire controls as well as a similar glass cockpit to increase the commonality. The A330 was Airbus's first airliner to offer a choice of three engines: the General Electric CF6, Pratt & Whitney PW4000, or the Rolls-Royce Trent 700. The A330-300 has a range of 11,750 km (6,340 nmi 7,300 mi) with 277 passengers, while the shorter A330-200 can cover 13,450 km (7,260 nmi 8,360 mi) with 247 passengers.