An Airbus A330-200, the model that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on Monday. (Reuters)

London, June 1: Until today the Airbus A330 had an impeccable safety record with not a single fatal incident involving passengers since it first went into commercial operation in 1993.

Wide-bodied and with twin engines, it is used by carriers around the world, including Etihad, the UAE airline, Quantas, KLM and Air France, as a medium- to long-range craft that has successfully competed with the Boeing 767.

There are two types — the A330-200, the model that crashed today, capable of carrying up to 293 passengers, and the slightly longer A330-300 which was developed at the same time. They have a range of about 12,500km.

Before today the only deaths associated with the A330 occurred on June 30, 1994, when an Airbus A330-300 crashed during a test flight soon after take off from Toulouse airport. Pilot error and faulty autopilot systems were blamed for the crash, which killed everyone on board — three pilots, two engineers and two observers.

The only other violent incident associated with the plane came in 2001, when the Tamil Tigers managed to destroy two Airbus 330-200 craft belonging to Sri Lankan Airlines in a suicide attack on Bandaranaike airport. The planes were on the ground and empty at the time of the attack.

There have however been several serious events associated with the plane. On October 7 last year a Qantas A330-300 suddenly lost 650ft in altitude after a fault caused the autopilot to disengage. Thirty-six people on board were hurt, 12 of them seriously, as occupants were slammed into the roof of the cabin.

In 2001 an Air Transat flight performed the world’s longest recorded glide by a jet airliner after an A330-243 suffered double engine failure following a fuel leak over the Atlantic Ocean during a flight from Toronto to Lisbon.

The airliner lost nearly 37,000 gallons of fuel and glided without power for nearly half an hour before making an emergency landing in the Azores. None of the passengers was hurt but 12 tyres burst.

And in 2003 an engine on a flight from Miami by Swiss carrier Edelweiss Air exploded after take-off. None of the aircraft’s 175 passengers was hurt when the craft made an emergency landing.