Thomas Ruth A330-300

The Airbus A330 is a twin-engined, medium to long haul wide-body commercial passenger jet aircraft. Airbus launched the A330 in June 1987 together with the four-engined A340, as a single aircraft program. Airbus intended the A330 to replace the A300-600R and compete with the Boeing 767. Many airlines replaced older wide-bodies such as the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 with the A330, which is 38% more fuel efficient than the DC-10. Although the four-engined A340 is the real long-hauler, the A330(-200) has an impressive range of 8890km (4800nm), with an option of even 11,850km (6400nm).

The A330 and A340 have nearly identical airframes and systems, apart from the engines. The A330 is certificated with General Electric CF-6-80E1, the Pratt & Whitney PW4168 and the Rolls-Royce Trent 700 engines. The A330-300 made its first flight on November 2, 1992 and entered service with Air Inter in January 1994. The ten frames shorter A330-200 first flew in August 1997 and entered service with Canada 3000 in April 1998. More than 1,000 A330's have been ordered so far.

Thomas Ruth developed a nice fs model of the A330-300. A panel is not part of the package, it is using the default A321 panel instead. The virtual cockpit is custom made and is using the gauges of the default A321 panel. In fact, it looks a lot like the default A321 vc, there are only a few minor differences. All usual animations are present, like dynamic flexing wings, animated tilting bogies, opening passenger and cargo doors, etc. The sounds are also borrowed from the default A321.

The exterior looks nice and represents the real A330-300 quite well. The basepack contains 3 liveries: Qantas, Dragonair and Northwest. The flight dynamics are quite good, the aircraft handles as expected from an aircraft of this size. However, the rudder yaw effect is not sufficient, which makes a crosswind landing diffecult, especially with strongs winds. Since this aircraft is developed for FSX, it is not backward compatible (FS2004 for example).

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