The A330neo is the re-engined version of Airbus's long-running A330. Wikipedia says the programme was launched on 14 July 2014 at the Farnborough Airshow, and that it came in two sizes, the A330-800 and the larger A330-900. The first one to fly was the A330-900.

The flight

Two industry news pages from 19 and 20 October 2017 give the same account, and both read as reprints of Airbus's announcement. The aircraft was MSN1795, the first of three A330neo development aircraft. It landed at Toulouse-Blagnac at 14:10 local time after a flight of 4 hours 13 minutes. World Airline News gives its test registration as F-WTTN, and Wikipedia cites the same registration for 19 October 2017.

Both pages name the same crew in the cockpit: experimental test pilots Thierry Bourges and Thomas Wilhelm, with test flight engineer Alain Pourchet. Three flight-test engineers monitored the systems in real time. Neither page gives a take-off time, an altitude or a speed, so I will not guess at them.

The power came from Rolls-Royce Trent 7000 engines. World Airline News describes a 112-inch fan and a bypass ratio of 10:1, against 5:1 on the engines the older A330 used. It also says the wingspan grew from 60.3 m to 64 m, with new Sharklets, and that the A330-900 typically seats up to 287 passengers in three classes.

What happened next

The same pages say the A330-900 test campaign would run to 1,100 flight hours, with the A330-800 adding 300 hours later, and that EASA and FAA certification was targeted for around mid-2018. Wikipedia says the A330-900 actually received its EASA type certificate on 26 September 2018, a little later than that target. It says the A330-800 first flew on 6 November 2018 and was certified on 13 February 2020.

TAP Air Portugal was named as the launch operator for the A330-900 in 2017. Wikipedia says TAP took its first delivery on 26 November 2018 and flew the first commercial service on 15 December 2018, from Lisbon to Sao Paulo.

The order book, then and now

When the first one flew, the 2017 reports say 12 customers had ordered a total of 212 A330neos. Wikipedia's figures as of September 2026 are 524 ordered, made up of 13 A330-800s and 511 A330-900s, and 199 delivered, 8 A330-800s and 191 A330-900s. Order books move, so treat those as a snapshot from one page rather than a final count.

In my own radar library

The A330-900 turns up often enough on my screen to have its own corner of the library. One catch I like is Delta's DAL20, the screen showing N412DX with a route of SEA to LHR at 11,000 ft. Another is DAL17 on its way out, LHR to DTW at 10,375 ft. The route line only appears on the newer screen layout, so it is not on every clip. Airlines I name from callsigns are my inference from the prefix.

Photographs here come from Wikimedia Commons: a TAP Air Portugal A330-900 by Wilfredor (CC0) and a Rolls-Royce Trent 7000 on a Delta A330-900 by 4300streetcar (CC BY 4.0). Neither shows the first flight; the first-flight photographs I found on Commons are CC BY-SA, which I do not use.

Which airline's A330-900 have you flown?

It is a type with a lot of airlines' colours on it by now. Which one did you last fly it with? I would like to know.

Sources

  • ADS Group, "First A330neo completes maiden flight": https://www.adsgroup.org.uk/knowledge/industry-member-news/first-a330neo-completes-maiden-flight/
  • World Airline News, "The first Airbus A330neo successfully completes its first flight", 20 October 2017: https://worldairlinenews.com/2017/10/20/the-first-airbus-a330neo-successfully-completes-its-first-flight/
  • Wikipedia, "Airbus A330neo": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A330neo
  • Photos via Wikimedia Commons: Wilfredor (CC0), 4300streetcar (CC BY 4.0)