The final chapter in the Airbus A310 story. The manufacturing line continues to be technically open but the aircraft has been largely superseded, such is the march of progress. The final manoeuvres are unhappy and on the wrong side of profitability.
Cameroon Airways wet lease an A310-300 from Air As well as Comet in November 1997. It had planned to use it throughout the wintertime period until finally the next March, but returned the aircraft on 5 December. On the other aspect of the African continent, a restructured Air Djibouti began functions with a leased A310-200 on 25 July 1998, serving its major links amongst Djibouti and Addis Ababa, Cairo, Dar-es-Salaam, Dubai, Jeddah, Johannesburg, Karachi, Khartoum, Mogadishu, Mombasa, Muscat, Nairobi and Rome. The plane was returned to Airbus Industrie Monetary Expert services in February 1999.
Egyptian start off-up Heliopolis Airways operated an A310-200 from Airbus Industrie Economic Products and services in Oct 1997, but a fall-off in tourist website traffic strike the airline hard and the Airbus was repossessed on 30 June 1998. Tunis Air, currently an A300 operator, leased an A310-300 from Royal Jordanian amongst 30 August and 30 September 1991.
Qatar Airways, shaped in immediate competitiveness with its have nationwide airline Gulf Air, began operations on 20 January 1994, at first making use of a one ex-Kuwait Airways Pratt & Whitney powered A310-200 leased from the producer. A second ex-Kuwait Airways product followed in June 1994. A community was established linking Qatar’s money Doha with London and various locations in East Africa and the Indian subcontinent. As companies grew, the airline required bigger plane and the A310s ended up returned in February and Could 1995. Another local carrier Oman Air has revamped its operations with two exSwissair A310-300s, which entered assistance in April 1999 on for a longer period sectors from Muscat to the Indian sub-continent. New providers to southern Europe and East Africa are staying planned.
Luxembourg-dependent newcomer Solid’air was owing to commence functions in spring 1999 with two A310-300s, configured for 232 travellers in a two-class cabin of 28 organization and 204 overall economy seats. Equally aircraft are on lease from Lufthansa for a interval of five many years for planned constitution services from Luxembourg to Orlando and Fort Lauderdale in Florida, and to the Bahamas and Dominican Republic. Other Central American and Caribbean locations will be extra.
Airbus constructed a whole of 261 of these aircraft around a 15 yr interval.