GE, he says, would have paid for the development of putting the GE 90 on an A330. I can remember [Airbus] just rolling their eyes, saying ‘no, why would we want to do that?
https://leehamnews.com/2017/12/14/top-a ... more-25654
So lets imagine a GE90 powered A330, with, say, 90K lbf engines, similar to the 77E. What would the aircraft look like? Would you expect it to be stretched, perhaps a family in A333 and A345 lengths? What would the range be? Presumably the A333 length variant would be heading into 7-8000nm territory, even back then. What effect would it have had an the Airbus product line? Presumably the A340-5/600 would not have happened. Would that have led to a smaller A380? 6+9 seating? And what of Boeing. Would such an aircraft have put pressure on the 777? What effect on the 787? Initially probably none, but given the success the A330 line had as the 787 program hit the skids, would the putative A330NG have added competitive pressure?
Or would the aircraft have been an error. Fragmented the A330 line and generated no more incremental sales than the A340 developments did. Thoughts?