airbus – Norebbo

Airbus A318 blank illustration templates with Pratt & Whitney and CFM56 engines

1 January 21, 2018 Standard

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Did you know that the Airbus A318 has a taller vertical stabilizer than the A319? And that there is a completely different engine option as well? I didn’t either until the evening I sat down to modify my A319 template into this cute little baby bus. The heartburn started heating up after just 30 seconds on Wikipedia, realizing that this one-evening hack job was going to take a lot longer than planned. I hate when that happens, especially when I’ve got so many other airliner templates on my to-do list.

And it wasn’t the taller vertical stabilizer and different engine option that made me reach for the Tums – it turns out that there are a lot of little differences in the engine coverings (for both the CFM56 and Pratt & Whitney options) compared to the A319, and it ended up being faster for me to redraw them from scratch rather than mess around trying to modify the other ones. Oh – and let’s not forget about the details in the engine connection to the wing as well. This ended up being one of those templates that seemed to get more and more complicated the deeper I got into it, and I was kind of regretting taking it on at first.

But you know what? Although it sounds like I’m complaining, the truth is that I’m actually pretty stoked that I learned that the A318 is a lot more than just an A319 with the ends chopped off. There is a lot more that went into the design and engineering of this aircraft than I originally thought, so it’s it’s kind of a shame that it was essentially a failure for Airbus (from a sales and marketing point of view). As a designer myself, I know exactly how demoralizing that can feel. Sometimes the projects I spend the most time on are the biggest failures. It happens, and all you can do is push it aside and move on to the next one.

A technical side profile line drawing of an Airbus A318 with cfm56 engines – basically, the line drawing version of the illustration at the top of this post.

The Airbus A318 was produced from 2001 through 2013, with only four Airlines operating them at the time of this writing (Air France, Avianca Brasil, Avianca, and TAROM). They never gained traction in the US, and the only ones I ever saw buzzing about were here in Southern California. Frontier Airlines had a handful of them, and occasionally I’d see them operating between DEN and SAN. Unfortunately, I never got a chance to get a ride on one, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t missing much. I can’t imagine it being much more than a fat regional jet anyway, and I’m not a big fan of small airplanes.

On the other hand, the traveler in me is slightly bothered by the fact that this is an active aircraft in regularly scheduled service that is deeply established as an “endangered species” – and time is running out if I want to add the experience to my personal flight log. I’ve been wanting to take a trip to South America soon, so perhaps it would be wise to see if I can hitch a ride with Avianca. Just to say I did it.

Here’s the all-white version with Pratt & Whitney engines

Finally, the line drawing version with Pratt & Whitney engines

Anyway, it feels great to have finished these A318 templates, as that means that I now have the complete Airbus A320 family in my archives (all the way up to the latest and greatest NEO). I can’t help but to hope that these won’t be a flop like the real A318 though…

Next up is the McDonnell Douglas MD-90. A quick check of Wikipedia reveals that the only major visual differences between it and the MD-80 is a slightly lengthened fuselage and (of course) larger engines. As long as there are no surprises, I should be able to crank it out relatively quickly. I am traveling to China next week though, so there will be a slight pause in the action. In the meantime, feel free to tinker with any of my other templates while I’m away, and I’ll get that MD-90 wrapped up as soon as I return!

Airbus A319 NEO blank illustration templates

9 Comments September 26, 2017 Standard

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Have you been enjoying my A320 and A321 NEO side profile templates so far? I hope so. A lot of work goes into into each and every one of these illustrations, and it takes me a lot of time to get them looking as accurate as possible. As long as there are people out there like you who enjoy the work that I’m doing, that’s all I need to keep grinding out more and more templates of commercial airliners. I also like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have purchased high-res vector and PSD source files of these templates on my online store – I hope those illustrations are useful for your projects and are helping you succeed in creating some really awesome content.

Now that I’ve got the A320 an A321 NEO templates out of the way, it’s time to post my favorite one of all: the A319. The big new engines combined with the short fuselage makes this aircraft look to be a tough little bugger with more than enough power for any mission, and it seems like it would be an awesome performer for long and thin routes across the US or the Atlantic.

Technical side profile line drawing of an Airbus A319 NEO with CFM LEAP 1A engines

Unfortunately, with only 51 orders for this aircraft on the books at the time of this writing (and no deliveries yet), most airlines don’t agree with me that this is the best Baby Bus of all. To put that number in better context, the slightly larger A320 NEO has 3688 orders on the books with 138 delivered to date. The A321 variant has 1429 orders with 6 deliveries so far. As much as I hate to admit it, things aren’t looking good for the A319 NEO.

This sort of thing isn’t new to Airbus. They faced a similar problem with the A350-800 – a smaller (but longer-range) variant of the A350-900 and -1000 that hasn’t seemed to catch on yet. As a matter of fact, the only airline with an outstanding order (for 12 frames) is Asiana. Rumor has it that Airbus is trying to talk them out of it and into another type of aircraft instead, and once that happens, this “baby” A350 will likely be killed. Will be A319 NEO face the same fate? If I were a betting man, I’d go all in on “you betcha.”

A319 NEO Pratt & Whitney engines side view

Side profile illustration of a white Airbus A319 NEO with Pratt & Whitney engines

Technical side profile line drawing of an Airbus A319 NEO with Pratt & Whitney engines

It’s easy to speculate what might happen in the long term, but the honest truth is that I really have no idea if this aircraft will see the light of day. Remember, the A321 wasn’t very popular when it was first released either, so maybe it’s just a matter of time for market conditions to evolve to a point where this re-engined A319 is an attractive option. Airbus obviously sees the potential in it, otherwise they wouldn’t have spent so much time and money putting it out there. Sometimes these things take time.

Until then, it will still be a lot of fun to see all of you take these templates and apply some really great liveries to them (both fantasy and real). And who knows? Maybe some of those illustrations will persuade some of the large airlines to think more seriously about this big-engined A319 and how well it would integrate into their existing fleets. Airbus needs your help! Do them proud.

Finally, I’d like to give you a little information about what is coming next. I’ve had a lot of requests for cargo aircraft, so I will likely do a 747-400F, followed up quickly by a 777F, and then a 757-200F. These shouldn’t take very long to do, so you can expect to see them on the blog (and store) relatively quickly. However, I will need to fit these in between the work I’m doing on my travel blog and some cleanup of some of my older templates. That’s right…I said cleanup.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, I’ve been working very hard over the past few months cleaning up and refreshing a lot of my old airliner templates for the online store. I’ve been adding more details, smoothing out the shading, and making the PSD files much more organized than the originals. It’s a lot of work to go back through and rework some of those old templates, but I feel it’s important because I want to give you guys the best possible product that I can. I know I’m a bit slow at times creating new templates, but it makes me feel good to take my time to get things right instead of rushing and pushing inferior illustrations.

Thank you as always for your support. You guys rock!

Airbus A321 NEO blank illustration templates

9 Comments September 1, 2017 Standard

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I suspect this is the one you’ve all been waiting for. The A321 NEO seems to be all the rage right now and I’ve completely lost track of the number of times that I’ve been asked to create these Illustrations over the past several weeks. I’m not really sure what happened, but all of a sudden everybody seemed to need this template right away and I was starting to feel the pressure to get it done as soon as possible. Was there a big airline order or something that I missed? I’m not really sure what the reason is for the sudden demand, but I’m happy (and a bit relieved) to post these side view templates today and make them available to all.

Technical side profile line drawing of an Airbus A321 NEO with Pratt & Whitney engines

The images above featured the A321 with Pratt & Whitney engines. Here are the CFM versions:

Side profile illustration of a white Airbus A321 NEO with CFM LEAP 1A engines

Airbus a321 neo leap 1a engines blueprint

Technical side profile line drawing of an Airbus A321 NEO with LEAP 1A engines

The story of the Airbus A321 has been quite interesting to me. I remember vividly when it first came out in 1994, because it seemed to be a flop right from the start due to an apparent lack of demand – at least outside of Europe. There were no airlines in the US interested in it other than USAirways, and the only place that it seemed to get any traction at all was with the airlines in Europe needing an aircraft of this size. For medium density intra-European routes, it seemed to be the perfect aircraft that fit the gap between 737/A320 and larger aircraft such as 767 and A330. But here in the US (and the rest of the world), it just didn’t have the performance needed for difficult missions such as flying westbound Transcon US routes into strong headwinds without payload restrictions, and flying out of hot and high airports such as Denver and Salt Lake City. The Boeing 757 was much better suited for the US airline market at that time.

20 years later, and look where we are now. The 757 is long gone, and these new A321 NEO aircraft are selling like hotcakes all over the world. They simply can’t make enough of them! With the new engines and a plethora of other improvements, Airbus has transformed the A321 into what many consider to be the next-generation 757, and I’m willing to bet that the executives at Boeing are squirming in their seats a little trying to figure out how to gain back some of that lost marketshare. Boeing simply doesn’t have an aircraft that can compete with the A321 NEO right now, though the 737-900/ER (and the coming 737 MAX 9 and 10) comes close. This is a very subjective argument I know, and there are some who may disagree with me on this, but the fact of the matter is Airbus caught Boeing asleep at the wheel and took advantage of a gaping hole in the market left behind by the cancellation of the 757.

In Boeing’s defense, they had every reason to cancel the 757 program in 2004. The economy was still recovering from a deep recession at the time, and orders for the aircraft had completely dried up. It was a very dark phase for the airline industry, and the trend most analysts were predicting was that the airlines were going to prefer smaller aircraft and higher frequencies going forward. That’s when they went all-in on the 737 program and started pushing it as the ultimate 757 replacement with new longer-range variants with higher efficiency compared to the older models.

But here we are in 2017, and there are a lot of airlines with older 757s being retired that need to be replaced. Unfortunately for Boeing, Airbus simply has a better product right now with their A321 NEO. In my opinion, this was a big goof on Boeing’s part. US airlines in particular have depended on the 757 as the backbone of their route structures for years, and with the overall economy as strong as it is right now, there is a need again for an aircraft of this size. There are a lot of old and tired 757s out there, and now that they are starting to be retired in mass quantities, it amounts to a heck of a lot of airplanes that need replacing. Unfortunately for them, many of those replacement orders are going to Airbus.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m pretty darn far from being an airline CEO, but it boggles my mind that Boeing hasn’t been working on a true 757 replacement for at least a few years now. Why they decided to go all in on the 737 (an aircraft that was originally designed in the 1960s) is something I can’t quite comprehend. I get the fact that it probably saved them a lot of money in the short term, but all they were doing was just kicking the can down the road and delaying the inevitable. They’ve done pretty much all they can to the 737 at this point, and if they want to compete with Airbus in the middle of the market (MOM) segment, it’s going to require an all-new aircraft. They need to get busy, but it may be too late.

My apologies for turning this into a history lesson/rant on the middle of the market airline segment, but as I said – this is the topic I find kind of fascinating and it’s been interesting to watch how Airbus and Boeing completely swamped leadership positions in that regard. Airbus has a hit with the A321 NEO on their hands, and we’re going to be seeing a lot of these things flying around for the next 30 to 40 years. Get ready.

My next side view airliner template (coming soon) will be the last one in the series: the A319 NEO. From a visual point of view, it’s my favorite one by far. Stubby bodies with fat engines…what’s not to like about that?!

Airbus A320 NEO blank illustration templates

0 August 30, 2017 Standard

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Here we go ladies and gentlemen. Finally, after more than two years of procrastination and kicking the can down the road, I present to you my Airbus A320 NEO side view template set. In my defense, there was a pretty good reason for waiting so long to do these illustrations: the lack of accurate reference material. Now, we all know that these new aircraft have been flying around for a while now, but there is actually very little data out there on the Internet regarding the list of changes that went into this very big update for the Airbus narrowbody series. I found plenty of good information about the new CFM LEAP 1A and Pratt & Whitney 1000G engines, but it was surprisingly difficult to find information about other significant updates to the aircraft (if there were any).

I’d also like to point out that I’m pretty darn far from being an aircraft engineer. As a matter fact, I even struggle when trying to assemble IKEA furniture so it would be in your best interest never to depend on me for thinking too deeply about anything that could crash, burn and kill people. However, after weeks of research, I came to the conclusion that there are actually very few visual differences between the existing version of these aircraft (CEO, which stands for Current Engine Option) compared to the new-engine (NEO) variants. It’s basically the same airplane but with meatier looking and much more efficient engines, which actually surprised me a bit considering how much time and effort Airbus put into this update. I was actually expecting major wing modifications and taller landing gear to accommodate those larger powerplants, but nope. Other than general internal modifications to both, there isn’t much on the outside to differentiate them from the older versions. But wow – it’s amazing how much of a visual difference a big engine can make.

Technical side profile line drawing of an Airbus A320 NEO with Pratt & Whitney engines over a blank background with and without the landing gear deployed

You should all know my stance on beefy-looking aircraft by now, so it goes without saying that I’m pretty much drooling over the A320 NEO – especially the version with those fat Pratt & Whitney engines hanging under the wing. I was never much of a fan of the A320 before this, but now it may be one of my favorite aircraft in terms of visual appearance. This is what the A320 should’ve looked like from the beginning! I’m also thinking that it’s a bit of a shame that Boeing couldn’t find a way to put larger engines on the next-generation of the 737. Doing so would have required a taller (and all new) landing gear, which would have added significant cost to the program. Airbus got very lucky that that they didn’t have to do that.

The all white and line-drawing templates above are the version with the Pratt and Whitney 1000G engines. Here are the same templates with the CFM LEAP 1A engines. Which do you prefer?

All white Airbus A320 NEO with CFM LEAP 1A engines

Airbus A320 NEO technical line drawing with CFM LEAP 1A engines

To be honest, I actually prefer the look of the LEAP 1A engine, but it’s smaller size compared to the Pratt & Whitney is less appealing to me. And now that I think of it, it’s probably a pretty good thing that I don’t run an airline because the visual designer in me tends to make decisions based more on visual appearances than anything else. That may be very bad for running a profitable business, but I would have one heck of a good looking fleet that’s for sure.

For those of you looking for the A319 and A321 NEO templates as well, you’re in luck. Both are currently in progress and I’m very close to having the A321 ready to upload. The A319 will follow shortly thereafter (hopefully within a week). I’d also like to use this opportunity to ask those of you who know these aircraft well if I have drawn anything incorrectly in my templates. Because hey – if I’m struggling to assemble IKEA furniture, there’s a pretty good chance that I could have overlooked something huge without even knowing it.

Airbus A340-600 blank illustration templates

13 Comments November 2, 2016 Standard

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Here she is – my favorite A340 variant of them all! I’ve been really anxious to publish these templates because the A340-600 contains pretty much everything I like in a big airliner: four very large engines, a long fuselage, and very well balanced proportions. Some may argue with me a bit on the proportion thing, but I think the extra-long fuselage with those four big Rolls Royce engines looks fantastic from any angle. I’ve heard it referred to as “the flying pencil” (the Boeing 757-300 has the honor of being referred to that as well), but that makes no difference to me. Flying pencil or not, she’s still a beauty!

Creating this template wasn’t too difficult, mostly since it borrows a large majority of components from the -500. The biggest difference (besides the added length) is the window and boarding door configuration. The -600 has four full size boarding doors, while the -500 has only three. Both have one emergency exit door. Other than that, was simply a matter of stretching a little here, pulling a little there, and repositioning components like sensors and landing gear to the appropriate positions.

Technical side profile line drawing of an Airbus A340-600 over a white background with and without the landing gear deployed

There’s something special about these large four-engined airliners that no other type of aircraft has ever been able to replicate, and it’s a shame that we are at the end of an era with this sort of thing. The aviation industry has moved on to large twins (two-engine aircraft) for cost and efficiency purposes and it’s likely that we’ll never see another four-engined airliner again. Of course Airbus could continue to develop variants of the A380 over time, but there are very few airlines in this world who have been able to make large quads work within their fleets. It’s simply too much airplane for most markets, so only time will tell how much longer we’ll see four-engined airliners flying across the skies above.

Anyway, I’m still up in the air (ha!) about which airliner template to focus on next. The Airbus A320 NEO seems like it would be a good option due to how popular it has become, but…I’m not ashamed to admit that it’s not very exciting and I’d prefer to work on something with a bit more style. How about a Concorde? Or DC-8?? I can’t imagine there would be too many of you anxious to download templates for those, so the NEO may be the one. We’ll see…

Airbus A340-500 blank illustration templates

7 Comments August 29, 2016 Standard

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Here we go – now we are getting into the “fun” variants of the A340! The A340 templates I posted last April were of the -300 variant which, to be quite honest, isn’t a very remarkable airplane. The biggest issue is how underpowered it is (despite having 4-engines), and quite a few airlines have voiced their disappointment in it’s overall performance over the years. It’s a well-built and reliable aircraft no doubt, but it just didn’t live up to it’s promises.

But then the stretched and re-engined -500 and -600 variants came along, and the A340 became relevant and competitive again. These aircraft were so much more capable than the -300 and -200 in pretty much every regard. More power, more range, and higher payload capabilities are just a few of the things which gave new life to this aircraft family. Unfortunately, most of the airline industry is moving away from 4-engined aircraft and the future isn’t looking good for the A340. The twin-engine A350 is simply the better option for most airlines that need an aircraft of this size.

Regardless of the A340’s future, the -500 and -600 are my favorites of this series. They are both long and lean, and the larger engines and wings help to make these things look like proper long-range wide body airliners. Of course I realize that’s a very subjective statement, but to me, bigger is better when it comes to long haul air travel. I’d be a horrible airline CEO, wouldn’t I? Buying large aircraft just because they look cool is a recipe for disaster. Just ask pretty much any airline who has bought the A380…

Technical side profile line drawing of an Airbus A340-500 over a white background with and without the landing gear deployed

The beefy engines on the -500 and -600 are exactly what the A340 needed to make it fit the image of a capable high-performance airliner. The -200 and -300 variants had tiny engines which didn’t really fit the proportions of the fuselage all that well, but these big Rolls Royce Trent 553’s hanging under the wings balance things out nicely. You already know my stance on big-engined aircraft (the bigger the better!) so there’s no point in spewing off about that again.

This post is for the -500 templates only, but I’ll be posting the -600 very soon. The wireframe line drawing is complete, and I’m almost done creating the all-white rendered version. There are a few minor details that I’m having a hard time verifying, so I’d rather spend the time to make sure that I get it right before rushing though it and posting something that is incorrect. Look for those templates soon!

Airbus 340-300 and A340-300X blank illustration templates

23 Comments April 18, 2016 Standard

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One of the problems with taking a long time to do a single airliner template is that more often than not (especially if it takes long enough), the aircraft in question is no longer popular and highly sought-after by the time the illustrations are complete. Of course I knew that the Airbus A340 was a dying breed when I first thought to make side view templates of it way back in 2012, but here in 2016, the airlines can’t seem to retire these things fast enough. Sure they were a perfectly fine aircraft for their day (ok, perhaps a bit underpowered), but there are now far better performing and more fuel-efficient options available from both Airbus and Boeing which makes this bird an economically poor performer in comparison.

The featured image for this post is the A340-300 (non X). Here is the line drawing of that version over a blank background with and without the landing gear deployed

Luckily for me, this was a relatively easy set of drawings to make. Since the A340 is basically an A330 with four engines (and a few other really minor changes), I was able to leverage my existing A330 templates quite nicely. Essentially all I had to do was to create a new wing and engines, make a few minor adjustments, and I then I was good to go. It wasn’t easy by any means, but it was much better than having to create a complete aircraft from scratch! The landing gear is always the most time-consuming part of creating these illustrations, with the wing and engines being the second biggest time-suck. Having half of the work done already was a huge time saver.

Two side profile illustrations of a white Airbus A340-300X over a blank background with and without the landing gear deployed

A340-300X side profile line drawing with and without the landing gear

Speaking of wings and engines, I guess I never realized how small the A340-300’s engines really are. Sure there are four of them, but still…they are relatively tiny when compared to the fuselage of this airplane. I noticed the same thing with my Embraer 175 templates – that airplane has the tiniest engines of all!

My apologies once again for taking so long to create blank illustration templates for the A340. I know many of you have been asking for these over the past few years so hopefully you will find them useful for your projects. Note that I am also going to be doing all of the other variants of the A340 over the coming weeks. I’m going to start with the -500 and -600, and will then wrap this set up with the least-popular -200. I know this series has been a long time coming so I thank you all for your patience!

Airbus A330-300 blank illustration templates with all three engine options

4 Comments February 18, 2016 Standard

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I really wish that I could work on these side view airliner templates full time, because things would happen a whole heck of a lot faster than they are right now. I’m almost embarrassed that it has taken this long to create these A330-300 illustrations – after all, it’s basically an A330-200 that’s just a little bit longer. My apologies for dragging my feet on this one.

That’s not to say this was super easy and it only took me ten minutes to put together. The fact that the vertical stabilizers are different between the -200 and -300 made this a slightly more involved project than simply stretching the fuselage, and it did take a bit of time to make sure that I illustrated the differences correctly. Making matters worse was the fact that I realized that the vertical stabilizer on my original A330-200 illustrations wasn’t totally correct so I had to go back and update those as well. It wasn’t a big deal, and it actually felt very satisfying to have made those updates. Like I said – the more accurate these illustrations are the better. I still don’t recommend building actual airplanes from my drawings though. They aren’t that accurate.

The image at the top of this post is the all white version of the -300 with General Electric (GE) engines. Here is the wireframe line drawing for that model:

A330-300 line drawing with GE engines

Next up is the Rolls Royce Trent option. This is the version that the designer in me likes the least, as I just can’t seem to get over the fact that the long and thin shape of this powerplant looks out of place on a modern airliner. But the “Trent” name is super cool – I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is about it, but to me the name is powerful and fitting for a large aircraft engine.

All white A330-300 with Rolls Royce engines

A330-300 line drawing with Rolls Royce engines

Last but not least, here is the A330-300 with Pratt & Whitney engines. The proportions of this powerplant look the best to me, and is perfectly matched (aesthetically) for a large airliner like this. She’s a good looking bird, for sure.

All white A330-300 with Pratt & Whitney engines

A330-300 line drawing with Pratt & Whitney engines

On a side note, I’m still planning on creating templates for the A330-200F. I’m also still working on gathering reference material for the next generation A330 (-800 and -900), but I haven’t been able to find much other than low resolution renderings from odd angles that don’t provide much detail. I’ll continue to keep looking though, because the A330 is one of my favorite commercial aircraft types at the moment and I’m looking forward to having a full set of templates covering the entire lineup.

Airbus A330-200 blank illustration templates with Pratt & Whitney engines

0 February 16, 2016 Standard

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Finally. Here is my third and last template for the Airbus A330-200 series! Rounding out the set is this illustration with those big Pratt & Whitney engines looking good and hanging low under that large swept wing. I claimed that I liked the look of the GE CF6 engine the best on the A330, but I may have to retract that statement in favor of these PW4000’s instead. These are the largest-diameter engines currently available on the A330-200, so in my opinion, they are more in proportion with the fuselage (and overall size) of the aircraft. Note that these engines are the shortest of the three – but I don’t think that makes any difference. It’s the diameter that gives the impression of power and strength.

Now that I’ve completed the illustrations for all three engine options, the thing that surprised me the most is how different the connections are to the wing. The Rolls Royce Trent 700’s appear to be bolted right to that connection without much complexity, but both the CF6 and this PW4000 are actually blended into that structure in a way that I’ve never seen before on any other airliner. The Pratt & Whitney version is the most pronounced, as it looks to be seamlessly integrated into that wing connection without any hard breaks in the exterior surfaces. I can only imagine how long the designers and engineers spent refining this in the wind tunnel, but all I know is that it looks really great and it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve ever seen on any aircraft. Yes, I think it’s that cool!

A technical side profile line drawing of an Airbus A330-200 with Pratt & Whitney engines over a white background with and without the landing gear deployed

It’s the discovery of these interesting little details which keep me interested and pushing forward with this side view airliner template project. I’ve learned so much about these airplanes since my first DC-10 illustration back in 2012, and it’s a lot of fun noticing new things that I never would have paid attention to before. There is a lot of work that goes into the design of these airplanes, and I’m certainly appreciating that fact with each new template that I create.

Now that my A330-200 set is complete, it’s time to move on to the stretched -300 variant. I just finished all three versions of that one (yes, the same three engines are options) and I’ll be posting those templates very soon. After that I think I’m going to tackle the A340, which makes sense since it shares so many components with the A330. My fingers are crossed that it’s going to be relatively simple and won’t require me to start from scratch. Using existing components will make things go much faster…

Airbus A330-200 blank illustration templates with GE engines

0 February 15, 2016 Standard

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This has been a long time coming, but I’ve finally decided to go ahead and finish out my Airbus A330-200 templates and create versions with the other two engine options. The first illustration I created way back in 2014 had the Rolls Royce Trent 700 engines, but I’ve been getting a lot of requests for the others lately and I don’t think it can wait any longer. So here it is: an updated version with the much fatter and tougher looking GE CF6 engine option.

I guess I never realized before how weird those Rolls Royce engines look on the A330. They are very cigar-like; long and lean, sort of like a scaled up version of the original Pratt & Whitney JT8D engines on the old 737-100 (which looked more like rockets than engines). But now that I’ve spent so long researching and illustrating this General Electric CF6 engine, it seems “normal” to me and I can’t help but to raise an eyebrow or two when looking at my original A330 RR drawing.

A technical side profile line drawing of an Airbus A330-200 with General Electric engines over a white background with and without the landing gear deployed

Another thing I like about this GE engine is the way that the exhaust protrudes out the back. It has a very aerodynamic look to it compared to the similar-shaped Pratt & Whitney engine option that I just finished as well (coming to norebbo.com soon), and I like the way that the entire structure is broken up into three parts. There’s the fat main section, a step down to the thinner mid-exhaust section, and finally the pointy exhaust tip protruding out the rear. It’s a good looking powerplant – the best looking by far on the A330 as far as I’m concerned.

From a styling and design point of view, my only gripe is the overall diameter. It was really hard for me not to take some artistic license as I was drawing this to increase the size of the engine a bit to make it look even tougher, but my desire to keep these templates as realistic as possible trumped that urge. This is why I’m looking forward to the A330 NEO (New Engine Option) so much – that airplane features much bigger engines, and you can bet I’m going to do a template of that one as soon as I can get my hands on some decent reference material. It’s going to make these A330-200’s look weak (and probably a little bit funny) in comparison!

Anyway, I’m going to upload a template of the -200 with Pratt & Whitney engines next. The longer -300 series is coming after that – with all three engine options of course.