Catching up with the Airbus prototypes

This is a new series of hopefully useful posts to catch up with the prototype and demonstrator aircraft produced by different aircraft manufacturers around the world.

The prototype model is the first of the type to fly, and will later be joined by other examples to help achieve flight certification.

Following this, the prototype will often either be kept for future testing and modification, delivered to an airline customer, sent to a museum or stored and ultimately scrapped.

In this first post we’ll look at the various Airbus aircraft model prototypes produced from the first A300B1 to the most recent A350XWB.

A300B1

F-OCAZ. Scrapped. Centre section and wing on display at Munich City Museum Von Meisterwerke, Germany. Other parts exist at Paris Le Bourget and Toulouse Blagnac.

A300B2

F-BUAD. On public display at Cologne/Bonn Airport, Germany, after spending time as a Zero-G trainer.

A300B4

Scrapped

A300B4-600

HZ-AJA. Stored at Hofuf Al-Ahsa Airport, Saudi Arabia.

A310-200

N450FE. Active with FedEx Express.

A310-300

N803FD. Active with FedEx Express.

A318

A6-AAM. Private, based Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

A319-100

C-GBIP. Active with Air Canada.

A320-100

F-WWBA. Active as testbed, Toulouse Blagnac, France. To be preserved at Aeroscopia Museum, Toulouse.

A320-200

Scrapped

A321-100

TC-ONS. Active with Onur Air.

A321-200

B-HTF. Active with Dragonair, Hong Kong.

A330-200

CS-TOH. Active with TAP Portugal.

A330-300

B-HLJ. Active with Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong. On lease to Dragonair.

A340-200

HZ-124. Active with Royal Saudi Air Force, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

A340-300

F-WWAI. Stored at Toulouse Blagnac, France. Will be used as future testbed with BLADE.

A340-500

A6-ERF. Stored at Ras Al Khaimah, UAE. Will be scrapped.

A340-600

F-WWCA. Stored at Lourdes Tarbes, France.

A350-900

F-WXWB. Active at Toulouse Blagnac, France.

A380-800

F-WWOW. Active at Toulouse Blagnac, France.

MSN2 will be preserved at Aeroscopia Museum, Toulouse, and MSN4 will be preserved at Air & Space Museum, Paris Le Bourget.