Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider
- The Airbus A330neo is Europe's rival for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
- The plane is based on the current generation Airbus A330 wide-body airliner.
- The A330neo has struggled to find customers of late as Airbus has taken just 224 orders since it went on sale in 2014.
- The Airbus sales campaign continues at the 2018 Farnborough International Airshow.
- The A330-800neo is priced at $259.9 million while the larger A330-900neo costs $296.4 million.
FARNBOROUGH -The Boeing 787 Dreamliner entered service to great fanfare back in 2011. Despite being hampered early in its production life by a series of serious reliability issues, the Dreamliner has since proven itself to be a hot-selling and highly efficient airliner.
In fact, it has come to dominate the small wide-boy market of late. Naturally, Airbus had to answer its rival.
Instead of designing a brand new aircraft from the ground up, Airbus decided to use its current generation A330 as the starting point.
At the 2014 Farnborough International Airshow, Airbus launched the A330neo. Like in the A320neo, "neo" stands for new engine option.
However, the A330neo is more than an old plane with a new engine.
To create the neo, Airbus thoroughly updated the A330 airframe, gave it a pair of brand new wings, and state-of-the-art avionics. And yes, there is a pair of fuel-efficient Rolls-Royce engines.
Airbus is offering the neo in two sizes - the A330-800 and the larger A330-900.
Thus far, Airbus has struggled to find customers of the A330neo. Through may, the European planemaker has just 224 orders for the plane which has been on sale since 2014. In that same period, Boeing racked up more than 400 orders for Dreamliners.
The plane's largest customer is Malaysian low-cost carrier AirAsia X with 66 on order. The A330neo's only US airline customer is Delta with 25 orders on the books. All 224 orders are for the Dash 900.
In March, Hawaiian Airlines canceled the last remaining order for the A330-800. In its place, the Honolulu-based carrier ordered 10 Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners.
In spite of the setbacks, Airbus is pushing forward with its A330neo sales campaign.
The Toulouse, France-based company decided to show off of its A330-900neo prototype at the 2018 Farnborough International Airshow in the livery of the plane's launch customer, TAP Air Portugal.
We were able to take a brief tour of the new Airbus jet on the tarmac in Farnborough.
Here's a closer look at the Airbus A330-900neo.