It can seat 220 passengers in two classes, or 240 in all-economy, and has a flying range up to 5,150 nautical miles (9,540 km; 5,930 mi).

On 26 September 1967, the governments of France, West Germany and the United Kingdom signed a memorandum of understanding to commence the joint development of the 300-seat Airbus A300.

[9] The A300 would be produced in a range of models, and sold relatively well to airlines across the world, eventually reaching a total of 816 delivered aircraft during its production life.

[10] During the development of the earlier A300, a range of different aircraft size and capacity were studied by the consortium; the resulting Airbus A300B proposal was one of the smaller options.

When the A300B1 prototypes emerged, a number of airlines issued requests for an aircraft with greater capacity, which resulted in the initial production A300B2 version.

[11] "We showed the world we were not sitting on a nine-day wonder, and that we wanted to realise a family of planes… we won over customers we wouldn't otherwise have won… now we had two planes that had a great deal in common as far as systems and cockpits were concerned."

In order to minimise the associated research and development costs for the tentative project, Airbus chose to examine several early design studies performed during the A300 programme.

However, such a design would have resulted in a relatively small fuselage being mated to a comparatively large wing and oversized undercarriage; such an arrangement would have, amongst other things, made the aircraft consume an unnecessarily larger amount of fuel as it carried heavier weight than what was otherwise required.

[12] Another problem for the programme was presented in the form of inflation, the rate of which in the United Kingdom (one of the early members of the Airbus consortium) was around 35 per cent during 1979–80.

In May 1976, the French government entered into a series of discussions on cooperation, during which its representatives stated that the placing of an order by British Airways (BA) was a condition for the re-admission of the United Kingdom into Airbus Industrie as a full partner.

Independent of the British government, BAe commenced its own dialogue between itself and American aircraft manufacturers Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, for the purpose of assessing if BAe could participate in any of their future programmes, although the company's chairman, Lord Beswick, publicly stated that the overall aim of the firm was to pursue collaboration in Europe.

Under the negotiated arrangement, BAe would be allocated a 20 per cent shareholding in Airbus Industrie, and would perform "a full part in the development and manufacturing of the A310".

[14] From late 1977, prior to the Varley announcement, BAe had already commenced work on the design of the new wing at its facility in Hatfield.

However, due to negotiations with Britain on its return to the Airbus consortium being protracted, alternative options were explored, including potentially manufacturing the wing elsewhere.

[7] At the same time as the British efforts, French aerospace firm Aérospatiale, German aircraft manufacturer Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB), and Dutch-German joint venture company VFW-Fokker were also conducting their individual studies into possible options for the wing of the prospective airliner.

On 9 June 1978, Swissair and Lufthansa developed a joint specification for the aircraft, and within a month, announced that they would place the launch orders.

[14] Increasingly strong interest in the tentative airliner, coupled with the recovery of the industry during the late 1970s, contributed to Airbus deciding to put the A310 into production on 7 July 1978.

During 1979, in response to the lack of demand for the A310-100, Airbus decided to stop offering the lower gross weight model which had been originally proposed for Lufthansa; as a consequence, none of this variant were ultimately manufactured.

[16] During the early 1990s, demand for the aircraft began to slacken; there were no new A310 passenger orders placed during the late 1990s, in part due to the introduction of the newer and more advanced Airbus A330 during this time.

[22] From 1985 onwards, the A310-300 introduced wingtip fences which reduced vortex drag and thus improved cruise fuel consumption by over 1.5%.

[7] The company had developed the cockpit to significantly enhance the aircraft's man-machine interface, thereby improving operational safety.

[25] The A310 was equipped with a modified undercarriage, derived from the A300; the landing gear were outfitted with carbon brakes, which were fitted as standard.