How many seats does an Airbus A330 have?

Flew Delta's A330-300 last month - 282 seats in their config.

The other answers nailed it. configuration is everything with these planes - you can stretch them out for long-haul comfort or cram way more bodies in if you're going regional. I've seen the -300 with 350+ in high-density setups, though that's pretty brutal for anything over like 4 hours.

As mentioned above, it really comes down to the airline's configuration. I've been on a few A330s for work travel and the seat count varies all over the place depending on whether they're going for comfort on long hauls or trying to maximize capacity. The -300 is the common one you'll see, and from what I've experienced, most airlines are running somewhere in that 280-320 range, though some definitely pack them tighter if they're doing shorter routes.

The seat count really swings based on whether the airline prioritizes cargo space or passenger capacity - A330s doing freight runs might have minimal seating compared to a dense passenger config. Worth noting that even within the same airline's fleet, you'll see variation depending on when the plane was delivered and what interior refresh it got, so two A330-300s from the same carrier could still have different layouts.

The real answer isn't just about the aircraft model - it's that airlines treat these planes like puzzle boxes. You can fit anywhere from around 250 seats up to well over 400 depending on what the airline actually wants to do with the aircraft. The -200 and -300 variants give airlines a range to work with, but within each variant, the differences are massive. I've cared for patients on long-haul flights where the A330 felt spacious with maybe 280 seats in a 1-2-1 business class heavy config, versus regional runs where they've crammed bodies in with tight economy seating.

What doesn't get mentioned much is how fuel capacity and range planning affects this. Airlines configuring for ultra-long-haul routes (like Australia runs) often go lighter on total seats because you're burning fuel just to move that many people across 14+ hours. The weight-to-fuel ratio matters, so you'll see those flights with lower seat counts even though technically the plane could hold more. That's the practical constraint nobody talks about when they're just quoting the theoretical maximum numbers.