When did the Airbus A320 come out?

Airbus launched the A320 programme on 2 March 1984 with a launch order from Air France, after years of studies under the name JET (Joint European Transport). The prototype was unveiled in Toulouse on 14 February 1987 and made its first flight eight days later, on 22 February 1987. Joint certification from the European authorities followed on 26 February 1988, and Air France received the first aircraft on 28 March of that year; the first commercial flights were operated in early April 1988.

It was the first airliner with full fly-by-wire flight controls: pilots fly through a sidestick, and a computer translates their commands into control surface movements while respecting a set of flight envelope protection limits. It also introduced an all-glass cockpit and a fuselage slightly wider than the Boeing 737's, its rival ever since. That philosophy carried over to every later Airbus, from the A330 to the A350, so a pilot can move between models with a shortened differences course. The base model spawned the stretched A321 (1994), the shortened A319 (1996) and the A318 (2003).

In December 2010 Airbus announced the A320neo, fitted with CFM LEAP-1A or Pratt & Whitney PW1100G engines and sharklet winglets, which first flew on 25 September 2014 and entered service with Lufthansa on 25 January 2016. With fuel burn per seat cut by roughly 15%, the new generation made the A320 family the best-selling commercial aircraft in history, ahead of the 737, with more than 17,000 orders on the books (as of 2025).