History-

Having broken the United States manufacturers worldwide monopoly, thanks to its A300 series aircraft. Airbus began looking for stretched versions of the aircraft to build on the A300 series success in the 1970's. The research ended up coming up with two very distinct, yet uniform designs. One of them had a twin engine design while the second had a four engine design, which was originally known as the TA11. First officially published in 1981 as concepts in the November 1981 issue of Air International. Airbus continued to fine tune the design of the aircraft. In January 1986, the aircraft was launched to compliment the Airbus A320 and A300 series aircraft, the latter of which was at a disadvantage to the Boeing 747 due to ETOPS regulations at that time. The launch went with the Airbus A330, both of which would use the same all-new wing, fly-by-wire, which was derived from the Airbus A320 aircraft, and Airbus's Center of Gravity management system, along with the advanced building and materials used to build the aircraft. Due to the design, and the need for four engines, Airbus concluded that it would need a smaller turbofan compared to its A330 counter part, but decided that it would use the CFM International engines for the aircraft due to their higher thrust. Airbus had originally planned to equip the aircraft with a high-bypass engine, however, that plan came to nothing. The Airbus A340 (-300) would see its first flight on October 25, 1991, but with little success. Airbus engineers found a major design flaw with the aircraft. They quickly found that the wings on the A340 were not strong enough to support the outboard engines during cruise speeds without warping and fluttering. To correct the problem, Airbus engineers designed a plastron, which is an underwing buldge to help alleviate airflow problems around the engines pylons. Thus, the aircraft was now suitable to fly. The first A330-200 would later fly on April 1, 1992, with all the corrections for the wings already built in. Six aircraft would then be used for flight testing and certification. At the end of the flight test program, both versions were certified by the European joint airworthiness authorities (JAA) on December 22, 1992. With the FAA certification not coming until May 1993. The A340-200 and A340-300 entered service in March 1993. Th A340-200 with Lufthansa (Germany) and the A340-300 with Air France (France). In 1996, the first high gross version of the A340 would be delivered to Singapore Airlines (Singapore). By January of 2001 Airbus had recieved 307 orders for the A340 series and at that time had delivered 186 of them.

Variants-

A340-200
The A340-200 first flew on April 1, 1992. The A340-200 offers seating for roughly 239 in a long range passenger configuration and has a range of up to 8,000nm. A three class layout of the A330-200 has room for 295 passengers and a range of 7,450nm. The A330-200 is no longer offered for sale to any customers.