The Airbus A319 is the first shortened version of the successful A320. It seats about 124 passengers and is a competitor of the Boeing 737-300 and 737-700.
Apart from the shorter fuselage, the A319 is almost completely identical to the A320. Because it has lower weights but the same fuel capacity as its larger forerunner it also offers more range. The A319 has the same two-crew digital glass cockpit as other Airbus aircraft, including the A318, A320 and A321. Part of the control system are the sidestick controllers in the cockpit, which were first introduced on the A320.
The Airbus A319 made its first flight on August 25 1995 from Hamburg Finkenwerder in Germany. In April 1996 Swissair introduced the A319 in commercial service. Final assembly takes place at the Hamburg site of Airbus Deutschland.
 A bizjet-version is named ACJ (Airbus Corporate Jet), which first flew on 12 November 1998. It has extra fuel tanks increasing the range to 12,000 km (6,500 nm). Several countries fly the A319 as presidential aircraft. The A319LR (Long Range) has extra fuel tanks like the ACJ has. As an airliner it can fly up to 8,300 km (4,500 nm) depending on the number of seats. Some airlines operate the A319LR in a low-density all-business class layout on intercontinental services. Lufthansa for example flies the A319LR on services between Germany and the USA. Other customers of the A319LR are Qatar Airways and Air France.
Some low-cost airlines like Easyjet and Niki fly the A319 with smaller galleys, making room for more than the maximum of 149 seats in single-class configuration. In that case the A319 has two over-wing emergency-exits at each side of the fuselage. With one exit it is not possible to evacuate all 149 passengers from the aircraft within 90-seconds as safety regulations demand.
In early 2008 Airbus had sold around 1,600 A319 airliners of which it had delivered more than 1,000 at that time. That is quite a success for a shortened version of an airliner. Shortened aircraft are usually not very popular with the airlines. They are often less economical because they carry weight with them from the larger aircraft they are derived from.
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