Airbus ACJ319

Where it came from

The A319 first flew from Hamburg on 25 August 1995, was type-certified in April 1996 and entered service with Swissair that same month — a shortened A320 built for thinner routes. Airbus launched the corporate version, then called the A319CJ, at the 1997 Paris Air Show. The first airframe rolled out of Hamburg in October 1998 and the first aircraft was delivered in November 1999.

The premise has not changed since. Take an airliner that is already in production and already certified, add removable auxiliary centre tanks to turn a short-haul aeroplane into an eleven-hour one, and let a completion centre build whatever interior the customer wants inside a fuselage 3.70 m wide. Because the conversion is deliberately minimal, an ACJ can be returned to airline configuration, which is part of why the type holds its value and why so many airframes have had more than one life. By 2019 a little over 200 Airbus corporate jets were in service worldwide.

The re-engined ACJ319neo came later, with the first completed example handed over in 2020. It is a genuinely different aircraft: Airbus quotes 6,750 nm / 12,500 km for it with eight passengers, which is where the 12,500 km figure attached to ACJ319 listings comes from. The aircraft on the European charter market are ceo airframes, and this page describes those.

Who charters an ACJ319, and against what

Four profiles recur: sports teams, corporate roadshows where the kit and the working party travel with the principals, government and delegation flying, and large or multi-generational families. Touring productions are the fifth. What they have in common is that nineteen people, their crew and a genuine quantity of baggage have to arrive together.

The honest alternative is not another airliner — it is two ultra-long-range jets flying in parallel, which usually costs more, splits the party across two cabins and gives you two arrival times. Against a Boeing BBJ the envelope is nearly identical and the choice comes down to the individual aircraft. Against an Embraer Lineage 1000E you get a wider cabin and more floor area for a higher hourly rate. Against a G650ER the airliner wins only on floor area and baggage: below about twelve passengers the jet is faster, cheaper per hour, longer-legged and welcome at more airports.

The tank trade: why the range is a band

An ACJ319 takes up to six additional centre tanks, and each one is fitted at completion and stays for the life of the interior. Airbus's own tail pages show what that does. One charter ACJ319 is published at 4,400 nm / 8,150 km and up to ten hours; another at 4,600 nm / 8,520 km; a third at 5,200 nm / 9,630 km and eleven hours plus. Same type, same photograph, a fifth more range.

The tanks are paid for out of the hold, so the trade runs the other way too: Airbus lists 21 suitcases for one of those aircraft and 80 to 100 for another. That is why our spec sheet publishes no single baggage figure for this type — any number would be wrong for most tails. If you have seen 12,500 km quoted for an ACJ319, that is the re-engined ACJ319neo's figure, quoted by Airbus at eight passengers. It is a different aircraft.

The cabin: rooms, not zones

23.8 m of cabin, 3.70 m wide and 2.25 m tall. The height is the part a business-jet passenger notices first: everyone stands upright everywhere, including in the doorways and the lavatories, and nothing about the cabin is a compromise around a fuselage that was drawn for eight people.

A full-specification ACJ319 is laid out as rooms — a forward lounge, a conference and dining area with a table you can genuinely work at, a private office, and an aft master bedroom with an en-suite shower, plus two or three lavatories. Day and night configurations are usually offered on the same aircraft. Two pilots fly it and two or three cabin crew work the cabin. The 19–50 span on the spec table is a certification range rather than a menu: the European charter fleet is uniformly nineteen, because above that count the crewing and regulatory treatment change and the floor area a master suite needs disappears.

Airports: what an airliner does to the choice

The wingspan is 35.80 m and the maximum takeoff weight 75,500 kg, which puts the aircraft in ICAO Code C and into airliner handling. Farnborough, Luton, Stansted, Le Bourget, Geneva, Zurich, Nice, Vienna, Barcelona, Larnaca, Istanbul and Dubai Al Maktoum all work. London City does not: 1,508 m of runway and a 5.5° glidepath, the steepest in the UK, restrict it to steep-approach types, and no airliner qualifies. Alpine and island short strips are out for the same reason.

At busy business-aviation airports the binding constraint is usually stand availability rather than runway length — an aircraft this size needs a stand that exists and is free, which is a booking question we handle early. Block times on this site: London–Dubai a little over seven hours, London–Larnaca about 4h 30m, London–Nice around 1h 45m, London–Geneva 1h 30m, London–Barcelona about 2h 15m.

What moves the price

From around €16,000 per flight hour, and on this type the hourly rate is a smaller part of the answer than usual. There are few ACJ319s in Europe, so positioning can mean a genuine ferry rather than a short hop, and it is on the quote at both ends.

Everything on the ground is priced as an airliner. Landing, parking and handling scale with a 75,500 kg maximum takeoff weight, and parking a Code C aircraft for a week at a Riviera airport in August is a line item people do not expect. Crew is five or so — two pilots and two or three cabin crew — with hotels and duty limits attached; catering is to a real menu rather than a tray. Then slots, night curfews at business airports, overflight charges across several countries, and the calendar: fixture lists, tournament weeks, the Gulf season, Cannes in May. Every trip is quoted individually.