Airbus A310 A310-200

The first A310 was the 162nd airframe off the Airbus production line and made its maiden flight on 3 April 1982, powered by the earlier Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7R4D1 engines. It entered service a year later: the English Wikipedia names Swissair and Lufthansa as launch customers, while the Spanish article adds Air Algérie among the first operators.

The first three aircraft were fitted with outboard ailerons, removed once testing showed them to be unnecessary. Late-series -200s adopted the wing fences of the -300, a feature later retrofitted to some earlier airframes. The variant had a maximum take-off weight of 144,000 kg and a range of 3,500 nautical miles — about 6,482 km — with JT9D engines and 237 passengers under ISA long-range cruise conditions.

A310-200 production ended in 1988, by which time the -300 — with higher take-off weight and additional fuel tanks — had become the standard production version. The -200 airframe also underpinned the convertible -200C and the -200F freighter, the latter available only as a conversion of passenger aircraft.

The -200 sub-designations identify the powerplant: A310-203 and A310-203C with General Electric CF6-80A3 (certified 11 March 1983 and 27 November 1984), A310-204 with CF6-80C2A2 (23 April 1986), A310-221 with Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7R4D1 (11 March 1983) and A310-222 with JT9D-7R4E1 (22 September 1983).