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Old 16th January 2007 | 16:20
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Gary Lager
 
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 1,266
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From: uk
Every aircraft design is a compromise between conflicting factors - wing thickness versus structural strentgh, for example.

Derivatives like the 319, 318 and 321 result from changes to a design which has been carefully optimised, so it is likely that performance in some areas will improve at the expense of degradation in others.

A specific suggestion for the difference in range you mention: perhaps the shorter fuselage allows less stabiliser balancing arm, so the tail downforce has to be higher. This might account for it, but I don't know for sure.

The website shows pretty simplified data - my point is there are many other factors which influence performance apart from wing design and overall weight.
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