Airbus faces battles over A330's future

[PARIS] As Airbus races through flight testing of its newest plane, the next-generation A350, Europe's planemaker faces growing battles to secure a future for the A330, until now its only truly lucrative wide-body jet.

Twenty years after it entered service, the 250- to 300-seat jet has repeatedly been pronounced dead by rival Boeing but refuses to lie down, outliving its A340 sibling and surviving for now the arrival of lighter new jets like Boeing's 787 and the A350.

But analysts say time is finally ticking on Airbus's most profitable wide-body jet, despite a steady series of changes aimed at prolonging the end of its production cycle and with over 1,000 still in service.

Without a fresh burst of sales or a slowdown from current record production levels, they say, Airbus faces a sharp drop in deliveries from 2016 onwards, with the visible backlog of undelivered aircraft now worth just 26 …