Nearly 4 years before the first flight of the Airbus A310 on the 3rd of April 1982, the program was launched on the 7th of July 1978 as the A300B10 by Airbus with orders from Swissair and Lufthansa. This would become the Airbus A310.
The Certificate of Airworthiness was issued on the 11th of March 1983, in June of that year the first commercial flight with an A310 was flown by Swissair
The aircraft had the same fuselage diameter as its sibling the A300, however, the fuselage was 22.8 ft (6.95 meters) shorter. Also, the wings were smaller than its big brother. The maximum amount of passengers was 275. The MTOW was 144,000 kg (317,466 lb)for the -200 version and 164,000 kg (361,558 lb) for the -300 version. The maximum range was 3,500 mi (6,500 km) for the -200 version and 5,150 mi (9,540 km) for the -300 version. The cruise speed was 0.8 Mach and 0.83 respectively.
The A310 was the first wide-body aircraft in the world with a 2 man glass-cockpit. (Later also introduced in the A300-600) Airbus offered two engine options: - GE CF6-80 - P&W JT9D (later PW4000)
A range of versions was offered the -200 or the longer-range -300. Other variants (among others) were the Freighter and Convertible versions.
In February 2021 approximately 15 A310's were still in commercial service worldwide, a total of 255 aircraft were delivered when production ended in June 1998. Officially production ended in July 2007 as one airline still had 5 orders outstanding which it never took up. Check https://www.airbus.com/aircraft/previous-generation-aircraft/a310.html for more details on this aircraft