Airbus A330-200

The Airbus A330-200 is the long-range shrink of the A330 family: six frames shorter than the -300 with extra fuel and higher weights, giving it 7,250 nautical miles of range when it entered service in 1998. Around 640 were ordered, and it became the aircraft that opened thin intercontinental routes, city pairs that could never fill a 747 but could sustain 220 seats across an ocean.

Roughly 240 remain in scheduled service with a strikingly diverse operator base: China Eastern flies the largest fleet, Alaska Airlines inherited a major fleet through its Hawaiian acquisition, and Qantas, Iberia and Air Transat still run it on long thin routes. Its conceptual successor is the A330-800, which inherited the mission but almost none of the sales.