Aviation International News senior correspondent Ian Goold has been involved in aerospace since 1964 and in aviation media for more than 40 years. He enjoyed a 20-year career at Flight International magazine, where he was latterly air-transport editor before turning freelance in 1993. A winner of the European Regions Airline Association Hank McGonagle award for excellence in aerospace journalism and a Royal Aeronautical Society Aerospace Journalist of the Year global&nbsp;award, he has edited or contributed to aerospace and aviation magazines, special publications, and websites in Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. Ian entered aerospace as an apprentice at the British Aircraft Corporation at Brooklands (Weybridge), where he worked on production and final assembly lines of the Vickers Super VC10, and BAC One-Eleven , and manufacture of Concorde major sub-assemblies. He subsequently graduated from the BAC Design Training School to work in the airframe structures drawing office (including design of international future projects, such as the Panavia Tornado multi-role combat aircraft) before joining Flight International in 1973. Apart from years of reading aircraft magazines and books, his first direct contact with aviation media had come during the early 1970s when he was involved at Brooklands with the Weybridge Man-powered Aircraft Group, which designed and built the tenth aircraft to fly under purely human power. As an aviation journalist, he has worked at more than&nbsp; 50 of the major biennial&nbsp;global and regional international aerospace industry shows at Le Bourget, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai (having missed attending only one "Farnborough" since 1960), plus innumerable NBAA, HAI, (U.S.) AOPA, and EBACE Conventions and ERA Assemblies. His favourite aircraft is the Hawker Hunter, of which – as a schoolboy – he heard hundreds make their first flights from Dunsfold, where also on September 24, 2013, he saw the penultimate landing of the VC10 (happily involving an example of which he had witnessed the maiden takeoff in 1970) a day before the last example made the design's final flight (unless, of course....).

Senior correspondent

Ian Goold

Increased range and payload for the <a href="http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/farnborough-air-show/2010-07-16/first-a330-200f-prepares-launch-customer-etihad">Airbus A330 twin-aisle twinjet</a>, announced by the European manufacturer here at the Farnborough International airshow yesterday, will be welcomed by Malaysia Airlines (MAS), whose brand-new A380 very large airliner also opened the week’s flying-displays. After requests from owners and operators, Airbus is offering the enhanced performance, which will permit A330s to fly between Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur and Paris among other potential new city-pair services cited by Airbus chief operating officer for customers John Leahy.


The new variant will be available at a maximum takeoff weight (mtow) of about 529,200 pounds, up from earlier increased mtow of 518,175 pounds chosen by six airlines, including three in Asia, and about 524,790 pounds selected by at least six Asia Pacific operators.


MAS said recently it is awaiting details of Airbus A330 product-development plans before deciding on a widebody-fleet rationalization. The Asian carrier operates more than 20 A330-200s and -300s, previously ordered another 15 A330s and has been considering whether to add more if the European manufacturer could find some additional range. Group chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya has said that, in such a case, MAS might elect to adopt an all-Airbus widebody fleet by relinquishing its 17 ageing Boeing 777-200ERs.


For its part, Airbus sees the enhanced A330 as a lower-cost, more-efficient alternative to the U.S. design. The European manufacturer says the new A330-300 model would cover “94 percent of the 777-200ER network.”


The increased weight will be introduced on the A330-300 model, which would “benefit from up to 400 nm extra range, to 5,950 nm with 300 passengers, and carry nearly 5,000 kg [about 11,000 pounds] more payload than today’s 235,000-kg [aircraft],” with entry into service around the middle of 2015.


Subsequently, the A330-200 and A330-200F mtows would be similarly raised: “The new [529,000 pounds] A330-200 will fly up to 270 nm further–to 7,050 nm–with 246 passengers, and carry over [5,510 pounds)] more payload than today’s [524,691 pounds] A330-200.”


In range terms, Airbus said the new A330-300 would also be able to connect, say, London to Tokyo; Frankfurt to Cape Town; Beijing to Melbourne or San Francisco; or Los Angeles to Dublin. “Moreover, compared with the [1992] original 212,000-kg [about 467,500 pounds] A330-300, [it] can fly 2,000 nm further [including to] 90 percent of the [London Heathrow] market, [compared with] 39 percent [originally].”


Airbus has delivered 887 A330s and holds orders for a further 306, Leahy claiming that 750 have been sold since Boeing launched the rival Model 787. Some 115 are said to have been ordered since the beginning of last year.


Compared with the 518,000-pound A330, a new aerodynamic package drawing on technology used on the upcoming A350 is said to reduce fuel consumption by one percent, while engines offer a further one-percent improvement. Also, a “load-alleviation function” modifies the span-wise load distribution to move loading inboard in gusts or continuous turbulence–so-called “de-stressing” of the wing that permits the higher mtow.

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