Explained: What The Codes Mean Behind Airbus And Boeing Plane Names

commercial aircraft names are something most aviation enthusiasts will be familiar with indeed almost all of you out there will know the difference between an airbus a350 and airbus a380 it would be another safe statement to say that those watching will know the difference between a boeing 737 700 and 737 800. but what about the difference between a boeing 737 824 and a 737 8ct it's all or at least some of these extra numbers and letters that we'll attempt to decode in the following video since the beginning of aviation most aircraft have been designated using a combination of letters and numbers even famous aircraft like the de havilland comet and lockheed electra had alphanumeric designations dh106 and l188 respectively although descriptive names like comet and electra are no longer featured in the names of modern commercial aircraft they're still present in many military aircraft the fa-18 hornet the f-22 raptor and f-35 lightning are just a few examples the closest descriptive name in commercial aircraft these days would probably be the 787 dreamliner however it seems to stop there these days the two big plane makers airbus and boeing stick closely to their own alphanumeric numbering systems when it comes to the official designations the names tend to consist of the following parts the major aircraft model the miner aircraft model and any additional letters used for designating other features this video will examine today's most popular commercial jets from airbus and boeing it is in no way completely exhaustive instead it's meant to provide a general understanding of what each of the various letters and numbers means within an aircraft's name so let's begin being the older of the two plane makers let's first start with boeing at the most basic level you'll probably know that the company's commercial lineup takes a 7x7 pattern 707 717 727 and so on until reaching 787 without getting too much into the history of boeing's naming convention it should be noted that boeing assigned the number 700 to jet engines the plane maker's first commercial jetliner was to be named the boeing 700 however the marketing team at boeing thought that adding a 7 to the end just sounded better which is how the boeing 707 came into the world one exception worth mentioning is the boeing 720 which itself was a variant of the 707 since the 707 boeing's naming convention for commercial jets has held firm with its 7x7 patent indicating the major aircraft type these jets have always had an additional set of letters and numbers added for all boeing commercial families a hyphen follows the model up until about 2017 three digits have been added these three numbers or letters represent the minor aircraft model this series of numbers tends to reflect two general characteristics aircraft size and aircraft generation let's take the 737 family as an example as each generation has had several series the 737 family of aircraft began with the dash 100 but has gone all the way up to the dash 900. here is how the generations and series divide the 737 original includes the dash 100 and dash 200. the dash 200 is a lengthened version of the dash 100 the 737 classic includes the dash 300 400 and dash 500. the dash 400 was a stretch of the dash 300 but slightly counter intuitively the dash 500 is the smallest of the three the 737 next generation or ng series includes the dash 600-700-800 and 900. the dash 600 was an update to the short-500 and is the smallest of the ngs unlike the numbering of the classic series each ascending number corresponds to a further stretch of the 737 with the dash 900 being the longest for the 737 max the naming took a departure from previous generations using single digits rather than three just like the 787 family for max jets the shortest in the family is the max-7 the aircraft get longer with ascending numbers moving up to the max 8 max 9 and the longest max 10. at times some carriers have dropped the word max from the name when referring to the aircraft publicly for example while air canada and its website shows it as the 737 max 8 singapore airlines calls the same type of aircraft a 7378 one further oddity is the 737 max 200 which is a high density variant of the max 8. when looking at the most specific of model numbers it appears that boeing has assigned the very last two of the three digits as identifiers for the original customer of the aircraft up until around 2017 for example 737 800s built for delta are designated as 737832 take a look at these other 737 800s and their customers and how the last two numbers or letters change so can you guess what airline would now most likely fly the boeing 737 924 as already mentioned boeing decided to drop these last distinctions for newer jets in recent years they won't appear for 787 and 737 max aircraft however while the newest 747s are referred to as 747a their full names do appear to have three digits after the hyphen thus boeing aircraft purpose built for korean air all end in b5 for example their 737 900s are seven three seven nine b fives while their seven four seven eight passenger jets are seven four seven eight b fives lufthansa seven four seven eight on the other hand are officially designated as seven four seven 830s moving on oftentimes additional letters come at the end of an aircraft's model and series these suffixes are another descriptor of the jet further distinguishing it from other aircraft of the same type and size suffixes used for boeing aircraft include the following er extended range lr long range sr short range ersf extended range special freighter bdsf bedek special freighter scd side cargo door c convertible this means the aircraft can convert between a passenger aircraft and freighter f freighter m combi these are aircraft with both dedicated cargo sections and passenger sections bcf boeing converter freighter i intentionally lower case intercontinental specifically applicable to the 7478 the 7478i is simply the passenger variant of boeing's final 747 generation if there's anything we missed let us know by leaving a comment below and now on to airbus the website travel and leisure notes the airbus first ever commercial passenger aircraft was the a300 in this case the a stood for airbus and the 300 reflected the aircraft's passenger capacity airbus would eventually realize that the aircraft performed better with just 260 passengers however it stuck with using 300 rather than a260 and just called the jet the a300b likely realizing that names based on passenger capacity could get messy the plane maker held on to its a3xx pattern or a3xo to be more specific this is why we have the a310 a320 a330 a340 a350 and a380 families just like boeing these aircraft families further divide into various minor models designated with a hyphen and three digits using the single generation a340 family we have the following variants which get larger in size as the variant number gets higher a340 200 a340 300 a340 500 and a340 600 while the last two digits are often a pair of zeros when generally identifying the aircraft these last two digits can get more specific excluding the fourth digit n suffix for neo aircraft explained later the last two numbers of airbus jets simply describe the type of engine used on the aircraft for example there are three engine variants for the airbus a380 800 which you can see here it's difficult to present rules and conventions when the plane makers themselves break the pattern every now and then the a320 family is one example of this while boeing's narrow body 737 family across its multiple generations have its suffixes that vary according to size airbus's a320 family moves up and down in size with the last two digits thus the airbus a318 is the smallest member within the a320 family moving up is the a319 then a320 and finally the a320 pawn all a318 and a319s were dash 100s meanwhile a320 and a321 jets and both dash 100 and 200 variants the dash 100s had lower maximum takeoff weights than their 200 counterparts which were heavier and had structural modifications to handle increases in fuel capacity airbus has modernized both the a320 and a330 families with neo versions with the three letters standing for new engine option as a result the older generation have been referred to as cos or current engine options the neo designation gets further complicated as the a320 neo family uses a three-digit suffix followed by an n if an aircraft code ends with nx then the aircraft has been fitted with airbus cabin flex to maximize capacity which also means the number of emergency exits is different just like boeing airbus attaches additional suffixes to further distinguish its aircraft from other jets of the same type and size here are some examples which are either part of airbus commercial designations used for mostly in marketing or official designations which are used in more technical settings lr long range xlr extra long range ulr ultra long range xwb extra wide body f freighter and p2f passenger to freighter so in wrapping up this video it's a lot of information to absorb and can certainly get confusing as there are so many differing patterns and structures for each aircraft family indeed we didn't even cover icao aircraft codes in this video which are used on some flight tracking websites and in other settings examples include 77w used as a short form for the boeing triple 7 300 er and 21n for the airbus a321 neo indeed we'll have to save this for another video on another day despite the chaos we hope this video has been able to shed a little bit of light on the commercial and official naming conventions of the two big plane makers and their various jets did you know about all of these designators and is there anything that was missed let us know by leaving a comment in addition to our daily youtube videos simple flying publishes over 150 articles and a podcast every week if you're looking for the latest aviation news and insights visit simpleflying.com thanks for watching and don't forget to like and subscribe before you go

Channel: Long Haul by Simple Flying

Views: 81,974

Keywords: aviation, flying, flight, boeing, airbus, planes, aircraft, 737, 747, 757, 767, 777, 777x, a320, a321, airbus a380, a380, airports, american airlines, united airlines, delta airlines, british airways

Id: zjGIMIe5W2M

Length: 13min 15sec (795 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 17 2022