AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 281 / 297

Plate 281 of 297 · Modern age · Short- and medium-haul narrow-body airliner

Airbus A320

A320-232, G-EUYU, painted as G-EUYU, an Airbus A320-232 of British Airways, delivered new in 2014 and flown on the airline’s European routes from Heathrow: a narrow-body twin-engined airliner with a low swept wing tipped with upswept Sharklets, two IAE V2500-A5 turbofans in short nacelles on pylons under the wing, a swept fin and a low-set tailplane, and two overwing emergency exits on each side: white upper fuselage over a midnight blue belly, split along a level line, the Chatham Dockyard Union flag on the fin above a red tail cone, the red and blue ‘speedmarque’ and ‘BRITISH AIRWAYS’ titles on the forward fuselage with a small coat of arms beside them, grey wings and tailplane, blue nacelles with metal intake lips, ‘G-EUYU’ on both sides of the rear fuselage and under the port wing, and ‘YU’ on the fin tip and the nose-gear doors, as photographed between 2014 and 2023 (no A320 is preserved in a UK museum; shape from Airbus’s own airport-planning drawings of the Sharklet-equipped A320, with the V2500 nacelle taken from Airbus’s engine figure and photographs because the drawings show the CFM56; the coat of arms is simplified, the speckled fade at the ends of the fin flag is drawn with clean edges, and the small stencils, door placards and walkway lines are left off).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as G-EUYU, an Airbus A320-232 of British Airways, delivered new in 2014 and flown on the airline’s European routes from Heathrow: a narrow-body twin-engined airliner with a low swept wing tipped with upswept Sharklets, two IAE V2500-A5 turbofans in short nacelles on pylons under the wing, a swept fin and a low-set tailplane, and two overwing emergency exits on each side: white upper fuselage over a midnight blue belly, split along a level line, the Chatham Dockyard Union flag on the fin above a red tail cone, the red and blue ‘speedmarque’ and ‘BRITISH AIRWAYS’ titles on the forward fuselage with a small coat of arms beside them, grey wings and tailplane, blue nacelles with metal intake lips, ‘G-EUYU’ on both sides of the rear fuselage and under the port wing, and ‘YU’ on the fin tip and the nose-gear doors, as photographed between 2014 and 2023 (no A320 is preserved in a UK museum; shape from Airbus’s own airport-planning drawings of the Sharklet-equipped A320, with the V2500 nacelle taken from Airbus’s engine figure and photographs because the drawings show the CFM56; the coat of arms is simplified, the speckled fade at the ends of the fin flag is drawn with clean edges, and the small stencils, door placards and walkway lines are left off). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.3 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (A318, A319, A320, A321); engine, crew and dimensions are for the A320-232, G-EUYU modelled here.

History

The A320-232

By the late 1970s Airbus Industrie, the European consortium that had built the wide-bodied A300, wanted a smaller airliner of about 150 seats to compete with the Boeing 737 and the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 on short and medium routes. Britain rejoined the consortium in 1979, and British Aerospace took on the wing, which it designed at Filton and built at Broughton, near Chester. The A320 was launched in March 1984, with a cabin slightly wider than its rivals’ and, for the first time in an airliner, digital fly-by-wire controls throughout: the pilots fly with small side-sticks instead of control columns, and the computers keep the aircraft within safe limits whatever they do.

The first A320 flew from Toulouse on 22 February 1987 and Air France and British Airways, which had taken over British Caledonian’s order, put the type into service in 1988. The family grew around it: the stretched A321 in 1993, the shorter A319 in 1995 and the still smaller A318 in 2002, all flown with the same type rating, so that one pilot can fly any of them. Airlines could choose CFM56 or IAE V2500 engines, and from 2012 the wing tips could be fitted with upswept Sharklets, which cut fuel burn by a few per cent.

The A320neo, with new CFM LEAP or Pratt & Whitney geared turbofans, flew in 2014 and entered service in 2016, and with final assembly lines at Toulouse, Hamburg, Tianjin and Mobile, Alabama, Airbus has delivered more than 12,000 of the family, passing the Boeing 737 as the most-delivered airliner family of all. Every wing is still built at Broughton. British Airways flies A319s, A320s and A321s on its European routes from Heathrow and Gatwick, and other British airlines, easyJet above all, fly hundreds more. A320s fly from every large British airport every day, but none is yet preserved in a UK museum.

This airframe

A320-232 G-EUYU

G-EUYUThe airframe modelled

G-EUYU is an A320-232, with IAE V2500-A5 engines and Sharklets, delivered new to British Airways in 2014 and flown on the airline’s European routes from Heathrow. No A320 is in a UK museum, and G-EUYU was chosen because it is well photographed in the airline’s standard colours between 2014 and 2023, while several of its sister aircraft have since been repainted in oneworld colours. The model shows it as those photographs do: white over a midnight blue belly, split along a level line, the Chatham Dockyard Union flag on the fin above a red tail cone, the red and blue ‘speedmarque’ and ‘BRITISH AIRWAYS’ titles on the forward fuselage, grey wings, blue nacelles with metal intake lips, ‘G-EUYU’ on both sides of the rear fuselage and under the port wing, and ‘YU’ on the fin tip and the nose-gear doors. Its shape comes from Airbus’s own airport-planning drawings of the Sharklet-equipped A320; those drawings show CFM56 engines, so the V2500 nacelles were taken from Airbus’s engine figure and photographs. The coat of arms is simplified, the speckled fade at the ends of the fin flag is drawn with clean edges, and the small stencils, door placards and walkway lines are left off.

Where to see one

Not on charge

A320s fly from every large British airport every day, but none is yet preserved in a UK museum.

All 297 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.