AIRBUS A321

The Airbus A321 is a member of the Airbus A320 family of short- to medium-range, narrow-body, commercial passenger twin-engine jet airliners. The first derivative of the baseline A320, it has a stretched fuselage and entered service in 1994, around six years after the original A320. The aircraft shares a common type rating with all other Airbus A320 family variants, allowing existing A320 family pilots to fly the aircraft without the need for further training.

In December 2010, Airbus announced a new generation of the A320 family, the A320neo (new engine option). The similarly lengthened fuselage A321neo variant offers new, more efficient, engines, combined with airframe improvements and the addition of winglets (called Sharklets by Airbus). The aircraft delivers fuel savings of up to 15%.

The A321neo carries up to 236 passengers, with a maximum range of 4,000 nmi (7,400 km; 4,600 mi) for the long-range version when carrying no more than 206 passengers.

Final assembly of the aircraft takes place in Hamburg, Germany, or Mobile, Alabama. As of 31 January 2019, a total of 1,850 Airbus A321 aircraft have been delivered, of which 1,827 are in service. In addition, another 2,241 airliners are on firm order (comprising 81 A321ceo and 2,160 A321neo). As of January 2019, American Airlines was the largest operator of the Airbus A321, operating 220 aircraft.

Aircraft with similar capabilities and configurations are: Boeing 737-900, Boeing 757, Irkut MC-21, Tupolev Tu-204