The Airbus program began in 1965 when the governments of France and Germany initiated discussions about forming a consortium to build a European high-capacity, short-haul jet transport. The following year French, German, and British officials announced that Sud Aviation (France), Arge Airbus (an informal group of German aerospace companies), and Hawker Siddeley Aviation (Britain) would study the development of a 300-seat airliner for the short-haul sector. Because engines meeting the Airbus requirements did not materialize, the initial design, designated the A300, was scaled to a 250-seat version.

In 1969 the British government dropped out of the program, but France and Germany signed formal articles to proceed to the construction phase. Hawker Siddeley, responsible for the aircraft's wing, remained a subcontractor. Airbus Industrie management company was set up in 1970 as a Groupement d'Intérêt Economique (GIE; “Grouping of Mutual Economic Interest”), a unique form of partnership instituted in French law in 1967. Originally, 50 percent of the funding came from France's Aerospatiale (later Aerospatiale Matra), created by the merger of Sud Aviation with Nord Aviation and the French missile maker SEREB, and 50 percent came from Germany's Deutsche Airbus (later DaimlerChrysler Aerospace Airbus), a joint venture in which Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm had a 65 percent stake and VFW-Fokker a 35 percent stake. Spain's Construcciones Aeronáuticas S.A. (CASA) joined in 1971 with a 4.2 percent share. Hawker Siddeley and other British companies were nationalized in 1977 into a single government conglomerate, British Aerospace (later BAE Systems), which joined Airbus as a true partner with a 20 percent share in 1979. In 2000 all the partners except BAE Systems merged into EADS (European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company), which thus acquired an 80 percent share of Airbus. The next year the GIE was replaced by a single private enterprise.

The A300 was developed to fill the market niche for a short- to medium-range, high-capacity aircraft. It was the first wide-body jetliner to be equipped with only two engines for better operating economics. The A300 prototype made its first flight in 1972, and the aircraft entered commercial service with Air France in 1974. Despite its excellent performance, the A300 initially sold poorly because of airlines' concerns about its new and unproven manufacturer. A breakthrough occurred in 1977 when the U.S. carrier Eastern Air Lines (Eastern Air Lines, Inc.) entered into a leasing arrangement for the aircraft. A second boost for Airbus came in 1978, when it launched a program to develop a smaller-capacity, medium-range plane. That aircraft, the A310, first flew in 1982 and entered service three years later. With the addition of the A310 to its product line, Airbus Industrie was able to offer to operators the advantages and savings of an aircraft family—for example, similarity of flight decks, commonality of parts, and a range of sizes that allow the aircraft to be optimized to the routes for which they are best suited.

Airbus's A320, whose program was launched in 1984, was designed as a narrow-body, short- to medium-range aircraft that incorporated numerous technical innovations, most notably fly-by-wire (electric rather than mechanically linked), computer-based flight controls. The A320 entered revenue service in 1988. Due to its great success, the consortium developed that jetliner into a family by lengthening the fuselage to create the A321 and shortening it once to create the A319 and a second time to create the A318. In 1987 Airbus launched two aircraft as a single program to extend its product line to the long-range airliner segment. The four-engine A340 entered service in 1993, and the smaller twin-engine A330 followed a year later.