Airbus A310

Updated: October 2026 – A widebody jet rolls up, but something is off with the proportions: wide fuselage, big wing, and yet the aircraft looks surprisingly short. Small, triangular fences sit at the wingtips. Congratulations, you are very likely looking at an Airbus A310 – a type that was once an everyday sight in Germany and is now among the real rarities. Here you learn how to identify it reliably, how it differs from the A300-600 and Boeing 767 and where you can still catch one in 2026.

What is the Airbus A310?

The A310 is the second widebody jet from Airbus and at its core a shortened, thoroughly revised version of the A300. During development it was therefore still called the A300B10. In the late 1970s Airbus saw demand for an aircraft smaller than the A300 but offering the same comfortable fuselage with two aisles. The official go-ahead came on July 7, 1978 with orders from Swissair and Lufthansa.

Airbus took over the fuselage cross-section from the A300: eight seats per row in economy, two aisles, room below for standard cargo containers. The fuselage, however, is just under seven meters shorter, and the wing was redesigned – smaller, with simpler flaps and without the A300’s outer ailerons. Typically there are around 220 seats in two classes.

Technically important was the cockpit: the A310 brought Airbus the two-person cockpit with screen displays, entirely without a flight engineer. The A300-600 later took over this concept, and it paved the way for the glass cockpits of the A320 and all following Airbus models.

The first flight took place on April 3, 1982 in Toulouse, and type certification followed in March 1983. In spring 1983 the first aircraft went to Swissair and Lufthansa. By the end of production, 255 aircraft had been built; the last A310 went to Uzbekistan Airways in June 1998.

The three features that are enough to identify it

The A310 is a case for trained eyes, because at first glance it looks very similar to the A300. With three observations you still get there quickly.

In the end, as always, the registration decides. Because all A310 variants appear under the same code in flight plans, only the registration tells you whether you have a -200, a -300 or a converted freighter in front of you. How registrations are structured is explained in the article Understanding aircraft registrations.

A310-200, A310-300 and the special versions

The first production version was the A310-200, which entered service from 1983. On July 8, 1985 the A310-300 flew for the first time, and from 1986 it reached the airlines. It has a higher takeoff weight, additional tanks and, as a special feature, a fuel tank in the horizontal stabilizer. This allows the center of gravity to be shifted in cruise, which lowers drag and fuel burn. The A310-300 was also one of the first airliners with wingtip fences at the wingtips.

Feature	A310-200	A310-300
ICAO type designator	A310	A310
First flight	April 3, 1982	July 8, 1985
Length	46.66 m	46.66 m
Wingspan	43.90 m	43.90 m
Wingtip fences	factory-fitted on late aircraft, often retrofitted	standard
Trim tank in the horizontal stabilizer	no	yes

There were also combi and convertible versions. The A310-200C, which can be converted between passenger and freight operation, entered service with Martinair in 1984. Pure freighters were not built at the factory but created by converting used passenger jets. You can read more about freighters in the article Identifying cargo aircraft.

Militarily, the A310 was used as the MRT (transport) and MRTT (tanker and transport). The German Air Force and the Canadian Forces each had aircraft converted to tankers; in Canada the type flies as the CC-150 Polaris, being replaced there step by step by the Airbus CC-330 Husky.

A310, A300-600 or Boeing 767?

The typical candidates for mix-ups are the bigger brother and the direct competition from Seattle. The finder narrows it down in three steps.

There is a peculiarity about the A300-600: it took over the tail and the two-person cockpit from the A310, and some aircraft also carry wingtip fences. Tail and wingtips therefore help little when comparing the two, but fuselage length helps all the more. The Boeing 767-300ER, in turn, is quite a bit longer than the A310; the direct competitor was the shorter 767-200, which entered service half a year before the A310. You can find basic tricks on the manufacturer question in the article Telling Airbus and Boeing apart.

The A310 in Germany: an eventful history

Hardly any widebody jet is so closely tied to German aviation. Lufthansa was the launch customer and took delivery of its first aircraft at the end of March 1983; in total the airline bought 20 examples of the -200 and -300 versions. Today no A310 flies with the Lufthansa Group anymore.

The leisure airline Hapag-Lloyd also used the A310. In July 2000, a Hapag-Lloyd A310 on its way to Hanover ran out of fuel; the crew attempted an emergency landing in Vienna, and the aircraft touched down just short of the runway. Everyone on board survived.

A special feature is the link to East Germany: the state airline Interflug received an A310-304 in June 1989 – the first Airbus aircraft for an airline from the then Eastern Bloc. After reunification the aircraft went to the Luftwaffe in August 1991 and, as “Konrad Adenauer” with the serial 10+21, flew chancellors and ministers on state visits.

The Flugbereitschaft BMVg (the German defense ministry’s air transport wing) at Cologne/Bonn Airport operated several A310s over the years, including former Lufthansa aircraft. Four of them were converted to tankers and transports at MRTT standard and also flew as a flying intensive care unit (MedEvac). In September 2021, 10+23 “Kurt Schumacher” landed in Hanover for the last time. The last German A310 the Luftwaffe bid farewell to, in June 2022, was 10+25 “Hermann Köhl,” whose service life had previously been extended by a few months. The A400M and the A330 tankers of the multinational fleet in Eindhoven took over its tasks. How to spot government aircraft today is covered in the article Spotting government aircraft.

Where you can still find the A310 today

Don’t kid yourself: an A310 is no everyday subject anymore in 2026. Only a few dozen aircraft are still active worldwide, many of them in Asia and the Middle East. The exact number varies by source and keeps changing.

Operator	Chance of a hit in German-speaking Europe	Why
Novespace (A310 ZERO-G)	very low	Based at Bordeaux-Mérignac, parabolic flights over the Atlantic
Iranian airlines	practically zero	EU sanctions against Iran Air, Mahan Air and Saha Airlines since October 2024, hardly any connections to Europe
Ariana Afghan Airlines and other operators in Asia	very low	Hardly any connections to Central Europe
Cargo airlines with converted A310s	low	Only a few aircraft left, operations hard to predict
Air forces, such as Canada	occasionally	Individual visits for exercises, ferry flights or state visits

Your most realistic chance of an A310 in flight is the A310 ZERO-G with the registration F-WNOV. It is exactly the former “Konrad Adenauer”: in 2014 the French operator Novespace bought the aircraft, Lufthansa Technik converted it in Hamburg, and since March 2015 Bordeaux-Mérignac has been its home. From there it takes off for campaigns for space agencies such as DLR, CNES and ESA, which regularly run parabolic flight campaigns there. With a trip to Bordeaux at the right time, your chances are not bad at all.

If you are searching deliberately, rely on live tracking: filter by the type code A310 in a tracking service and watch whether an aircraft is heading toward Central Europe. Military aircraft do not always transmit complete data, so it is worth looking at spotter forums and reports on state visits. How that works is shown in the guides on flight tracking with ADS-B and on comparing flight tracker apps. More tips for hunting exotics can be found in the article Spotting rare aircraft.

If an A310 does turn up in Germany, the runway direction in use decides your vantage point. How to judge it is explained in the article Understanding runway direction in use at an airport. Whether your spot is legally fine is covered in Is plane spotting allowed?.

Photo tips especially for the A310

The A310 is no beauty ideal, but its quirky proportions are exactly what make it a subject with character.

How to calculate the light at your spot in advance is covered in the guide Planning the sun position for your photo spot. Which gear makes sense is revealed by the plane spotting gear checklist. And if you want to keep a record of your sightings, the article Documenting your sightings helps.

Common mix-ups and how to rule them out

The A330-200 is also sometimes mistaken for it, because it is a shortened version of a larger Airbus. But it is clearly longer, has a much bigger wing with tall, angular winglets and is far more common in everyday operations.

Conclusion

The A310 is a piece of European aviation history: it brought Airbus the modern two-person cockpit, was a workhorse at Lufthansa and Swissair and, with Interflug, the Flugbereitschaft and parabolic flights, has a unique German biography. Today you need patience, good tracking or a trip to Bordeaux for a sighting. All the greater is the joy when the short, stocky jet then actually shows up in front of your lens.