The Story Of The A340-500: Airbus' First Ultra Long Range Aircraft 

The a340 500 is so underrated, one of my favourite retired planes

I was the captain on the first flight from Toronto to Hong Kong, to this day it’s still my favourite aircraft to fly!

The A340-500/600 are my favorite aircraft. The -500 was, and still is one of the most capable commercial aircraft ever made. It's such a beauty, a single decker quadjet is very rare to see. It's too bad only a few airlines ordered it and it's not in commercial service anymore, it had so much potential.

I remember flying this from New York to Singapore in ‘04. I’d come from Kansas, and was going onwards to Jakarta. One of the best flights I’ve ever had, at well over 10,000 miles travelled!

Words I never thought I hear in a Simple Flying video. Corpse. Cupboard.

I flew on a Thai A340-500 from BKK to JFK in 2006. Beautiful, comfortable aircraft and a terrific experience.

As a pilot, my favourite airplane has always been the A340, specially the -600 variant. It may not be a perfect aircraft, neither efficient on todays times with inflation and highly priced fuel, but whoever you place in front of this airplane, he/she would be amazed by that majesty. I've already assumed that I'd never get the chance to fly one, but that's why I have an A340 tie clip that's always in my uniform. True love for it ❤️

In 2008, I flew 17 hours non-stop from Los Angeles to Bangkok Thailand on a Thai Airways A340-500.

The 340-500s ordered by SIN not only had low density seating, but had bathroom blocks in the cargo deck with stairs down to them. This was possibel due to the plane having no capacity to carry cargo so there was more space available downstairs and that allowed the main cabin to be more spacious and customers not disrupted by being seated next to toilets.

Underated aircraft this. Only 340 I have flown on was Qatar 346 from Doha to Columbo. What a lenth of aircraft.

I still have an old picture of a Singapore Airlines example from July 2013, just a few months before the retirement. Such a graceful aircraft, with those 4 big engines.

Beautiful looking aircraft! Obviously reliable ,fuel prices drop ! Put that beauty back in the ! DO NOT SCRAP THA AIRBUS!!!!!!!!!

Had them on Frankfurt-San Jose and San Jose- Frankfurt back in 2018. Found them much smoother than the A380..

The corpse storage was refrigirated and for these long flights, they would not leave it in open spaces and didn't want to condemn a washroom. (and not sure who had authority on a flight to declare a passenger dead). Singapore had no choice but to make it all business because it did not have range needed to do EWR-SIN on a full load of passengers. And while the flight was full, it had no cargo capacity (again due to range limits on the 340-500). Airbus had overpromised the range capabilities on the aircraft so when time came for the 380 and then 350, customer were more demanding in the wording of their contracts. The galleys were also slightly different because on an 18 hour flight, second meal would have to be loaded still frozen so the galleys had freezers as well as refrigirated storage.

What a pity that the entire 340 project didn't have the success it deserved, the 340-600 was/is a beautiful looking aircraft and perhaps if Covid hadn't happen there would still be a few more in service, we can thank Lufthansa for their continued support for the 340, but potentially only for a couple more years.

I flew on these frequently with SQ between Singapore and Jakarta. Yes, they also used the ultra long-haul A340-500 for this 1-hour route, several times a day. This was for crew training and certification, since they didn't want to do such work on the lengthy LA and Newark flights. You often stood a chance of a business-class upgrade, since there were so few economy class seats onboard (before they removed them completely).

An inspiration for the A350-900 and -1000ULRs

Airbus a350 forever ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤Airbus fans here ❤❤❤❤❤

That was a very interesting video, thank you.

It could have been used for tanker, or successor of RC-135

Please make a video about the Sud Aviation Caravelle! I would love to learn more about the French Jet Lady. Also, great video ❤

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="208">3:28</a> 9V-SGE registration is still alive today as an A359.

beautiful plane

When Air Canada enterred CCAA (Chapter 11 in Canada), it petitioned judge to void the purchase contract. Airbus participated in hearings and managed to have cancellation penalties honoured because the cancellation would have been made after declaration of CCAA and thus payable. Airbus also offfered another option to accept 2 -500s at a lower price and provided the math to bankruptcy judge to show that it would in fact draw less finds from Air Canada to accept these 2 planes and run them at a profit than to pay cancellation penalties. What was not written in the court filings is that the 2 planes AC would get were early production aircraft with centre tanks disabled due to problems and thus lesser range.

Should do a video on where all Malaysian airlines’ 772er fleet have gone

pretty cool plane!

Unless I am very wrong, I thought that Aerolineas Argentinas had two of the special version of the A340-500 for their Buenos Aires to Auckland NZ + Sydney AU route.

If a340-500s had P2F, they'd be nice for long haul cargo transport

Go to love the 340 🍻

There are three A340-500 parked at OR Tambo

Flew on the SIA A345 back then

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="28">0:28</a> underrated plane so quiet but airbus should not have put hairdryer's as engines

List of ACJ340-500; 1. A7-HHH; Qatar Amiri Flight 2. VP-BMS; Sands Aviation 3. T7-SAU; Private 4. HS-TYV; Royal Thai Air Force 5. I-TALY; Aeronautica Militare (Italian Air Force) 6. TC-CAN; Turkey Government 7. 7T-VPP; Government of Algeria 8. 9K-GBA; State of Kuwait 9. 9K-GBB; State of Kuwait

I see the A340-500 Las Vegas Sands at Tel Aviv or Eilat airports from time to time.

How could you not at least mention the -600?

Make a video : Aircraft with wider wingspan when compared to its length 1.A380 2.A318 3.A340-200 4.737-600 5. 777-200 LR 6. 787-8 7. AN-10A 8. AN-140 9. AN-225 Etc

I have flown on the 300 and 600 variants

the only plane in the world with five APUs

No but would like to fly on one. 340-500. 340-600. Or 380 or 747... 47s limited to china airlines and lufthansa in passenger config. Are there other companies flying the 47 in passenger config? Oh n korean Air too but thats it to my knowledge

Was it not feasible to have a cargo version/conversion of the A340-500?

Lufthansa still operate its a340

Unless you are specifically talking about A340-500 Lufthansa still operate A340-600 on daily basis

Doesn’t SAA have a A340-400 ?

All eyes on Airbus as Boeing got problems. If it's Boeing, I'm not flying.

Really niche, although flying from China to South America would be an ultra long haul but the passengers numbers are too limited, too unstable to justify buying specialised aircraft and launching routes

If it wasn't made the following routes JFK/EWR/LAX🇺🇲/YYZ🇨🇦-DXB/SIN🇸🇬/BKK🇹🇭/HKG🇭🇰 would be stuck as one stops. Witj the introduction of this plane it was able to make it non-stop to those route then eventually the current generation aeroplanes B777-300/ER/A380/A350-900ULR future much improved A350-1000ULR <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="512">8:32</a> Does it mean SIN-EWR/JFK? As a matter of fact the ULR should be able to do SQ rival PR127/126 JFK/EWR-MNL non-stop in both ways since the HGW gets weight restricted on the return trip.

quad engines will always look cooler than 2

So the plane was modified to become a flying funeral home....

It was making money til changed to all business class. 100 to be exact. With economic downturn, it’s almost losing money on every LAX flight. While EWR is not that bad. We flew the pacific, Atlantic & over the North Pole. Eventually, the new CEO jus shut down the entire fleet.

What's the name of the BGM playing the later half of the video?

A340 -500: The Longest Range Aircraft in the World B777-200LR: ...hold my beer.

dont see a big use for it tho. a350 ulr can go 9,700nm

I have already made this remark a number of times: At "Simple Flying", you have a tendency to drown your viewers in (sometimes meaningless) details. But often the context is missing and the analysis much too shallow. Here: It does absolutely no sense to talk about the history of the A340-500 without mentioning the already by concept much more important and larger -600!