January 15th, 2002 saw the first flight of the Airbus A318. At the time, the "baby bus" was the European planemaker's newest variant of its popular A320 family, a further shrink of the A320, with the A319 having had its own first flight seven years prior. In hindsight, this shrink may not have been a concept worth pursuing as this particular type has experienced very little interest and meager sales.

Aircraft stretches and shrinks can make good business sense for planemakers. In the development process, much of the design work has already been conducted for earlier models, while many manufacturing and assembly processes can be shared with other versions of the same aircraft family. For airlines, efficiencies are found with crew training and certification, as well as maintenance and spare parts.

20 years ago

It was the list of benefits that prompted Airbus to undertake a "shrinking" of its A320 aircraft. Almost a decade prior to the A318, the A320 family had its first shrink in the form of the A319. As the new millennium neared, Airbus aimed to provide an aircraft that could serve the 100-seat market, and further shortened the A319 to develop the A318. The A318 program was officially launched in the spring of 1999.

Thus, after nearly three years of development, the first A318 flight would take place at Airbus' Hamburg-Finkenwerder facilities in Germany. After the standard rigorous flight test campaign to achieve certification, the first customer delivery took place on July 22nd, 2003, to US budget airline Frontier.

TAROM A318
Airbus' shortest A320 family member, the A318, is over two meters longer than the 737-100. Photo: Getty Images

The aircraft that never 'took-off'

With nearly two decades of active service, the A318 has proved to be a rather unpopular aircraft. Indeed, just 81 of these jets were ordered, with data from Planespotters.net indicating that just 33 of these baby buses are currently active, with several more listed as parked.

Right from the beginning, the A318 had more than its fair share of headwinds. With development taking place at the same time as the September 2001 terrorist attacks, when the entire aviation industry suffered. Airbus experienced numerous order cancelations from airlines when it came to deals for the A318.

While relatively poor per-seat economics was one factor in the jet's unpopularity, categorization by aviation authorities would be another issue. As Airways Magazine points out, EASA and the FAA would not categorize the A318 as a regional jet, as Airbus had hoped. Due to the type's weight, the jet would need to incur higher landing fees than its similarly-sized rivals- thus making it less economical to operate.

BA A318
The A318's decent short-field performance meant it was used from various airports with <5,000-feet runways. Photo: Vincenzo Pace | Simple Flying.

Today, in 2022, the A318 is still alive and still flying. Air France and TAROM appear to be the largest operators of the type, with 12 and four respectively. British Airways retired its final A318 in 2020 after using the jet for its unique transatlantic all-business-class service (Club World) for a little over a decade.

Do you think Airbus would have gone ahead with the A318 program if it knew how unpopular it would be? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.