CLS A330-200

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.

Started in 2005, Commercial Level Simulations (CLS) has grown to a high quality commercial add-on developer for MS Flight Simulator. Their products are not that expensive and yet high quality.

Their airbus A330-200 is a beautifully designed aircraft and it represents the real A330-200 very well. The A330-200 is part of the A330 & A340 package. It contains the A330-200, A330-300, A340-200 and A340-300 in all engine variants, sound sets for all engine variants, 167 pages PDF manual, livery manager and over 150 free high quality liveries (for all aircraft, can be downloaded separately).

Many cockpit systems are simulated like Realistic EICAM and EFIS displays, GPWS, TCAS, etc. The functionality of the FMS is limited and can automatically read the IFR flightplan that you've created in FS. The flight dynamics are well balanced and the animations are very accurate. The autopilot is working perfectly, but the autoland function is too basic and does not support 'flare' and 'automatic autothrottle disengage' like you find on the PSS A330. So in short, there is no autoland function. With small icons on the 2d panel, you can switch between the virtual cockpit and wingview. There are a few extra features like a 3D pushback truck, air stairs, dynamic wingflex (the wings are moving up and down in turbulent weather), engine exhaust heat effects and more.

The main landing gear is very detailed, but unfortunately, the animation is a bit strange. It looks like CLS tried hard to make the gear animation as realistic as possible, but despite their efforts, the behavior is still unrealistic. The rear wheels of the bogie make first contact with the runway and shortly after that, the forward set of wheels come down. This is exactly right. But after the forward set of wheels come down, the landing gear is floating until the nose wheel makes contact with the runway. Same thing happens with takeoff. CLS however, is not to blame for this, there aren't any A330/A340 type aircraft for FS with truly realistic landing gear behavior. This is most likely due to limitations in FS. The supercritical wings of especially the A330 generate a huge amount of lift, resulting in a slow travel of the main bogies upon touchdown. This behavior is almost impossible to recreate in FS.

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