A team of five test pilots and engineers successfully flew the new Airbus A330-200, a medium-to-long range passenger aircraft, for four hours following its first takeoff from an airport in the Southern French city of Toulouse. “We’ve tested all of its equipment in low and maximum high altitude flying and everything was functioning normally,” said chief test pilot of Airbus Industrie, William Wainwright on landing at the Blagnac airport. The aircraft flies like other aircraft in the seven main Airbus families. The test flight marked the start of an intense 630-hour flight test programme with SF6-80EI engines. The aircraft will also be tested with two other engines including the Rolls Royce Trent 700 and Pratt & Whitney PW 400. The one-year test programme will involve a total of six A330-200 planes before the delivery of aircraft to customers, including Emirates. The aircraft, with a 253 seat capacity in three class configuration, has attracted many airlines.
Other important events
1824 Liberia is founded by freed American slaves.
1834 South Australia Act passed by Britain’s Parliament, allowing for establishment of colony there.
1843 Tivoli Gardens, one of the oldest still intact amusement parks in the world, opens in Copenhagen, Denmark.
1914 The Panama Canal is officially opened.
1945 Korea is liberated from 35 years of colonial rule with Japan’s defeat.
1947 India gains independence from Britain.
1950 A magnitude 8.4 earthquake kills 200 people in Assam, northeast India.
1962 The Netherlands and Indonesia settle West New Guinea dispute.
1965 British group The Beatles play live to 55,000 fans in Shea Stadium, New York.
1969 The Woodstock Music and Art Fair opens in upstate New York.
1971 Bahrain gains independence from Britain.
1975 Bangladesh’s founding father, Shaikh Mujibur Rahman, is assassinated.
1994 Guerrilla mastermind ‘Carlos the Jackal’ is captured in Sudan ending two decades on the run from the West’s security agencies
1995 Fifty years after the Second World War ends in the Pacific, Japan apologises for a conflict that killed millions of people.
1997 Jennifer Murray and Quentin Smith complete their helicopter journey round the world in 97 days.
1998 A car bomb in Omagh, Northern Ireland, kills 29 people and injures 370.
1999 An armed group kills 29 people in south-western Algeria in the worst violence.
2000 A group of 100 separated family members from North Korea arrives in South Korea for temporary reunions with relatives they have not seen for 50 years.
2001 A US government laboratory has unveiled the most powerful computer in the world.
2008 Leftist Fernando Lugo becomes Paraguay’s president, ending six decades of one-party rule.
2010 Popular Saudi Labour Minister and poet Gazi Al Gosaibi dies after a prolonged illness.
2011 Attacks in more than a dozen cities across Iraq killed 66 people.
2012 Australia’s highest court prohibits tobacco companies to display their logos on cigarette packs, instead images of the ill-effects of the smoking will be shown.
2013 Christchurch’s cardboard cathedral officially opens, replacing the neo-Gothic structure destroyed in a 2011 earthquake.
2015 Usain Bolt wins gold in a time of 9.80 to become the first man to win three consecutive Olympic 100m titles.
