Aircraft Type Designations
I have seen confusion in the past about the way models of aircraft are referred to, so I wanted to make a quick post clearing that up.
Aircraft have a type and a variant designation. For example, the Boeing 777 has multiple variants, but they are all still Boeing 777s. So a type and variant designation for a Boeing 777 would be: Boeing 777-200LR. The variant numbers are usually always in numerical order.
The way they are often referred to is by truncating the last number of the type number and adding the first number of the variant. A few examples:
Boeing 747-400 becomes Boeing 744.
Airbus A330-300 becomes Airbus A333
Airbus A380-800 becomes Airbus A388
Boeing 777-300ER becomes Boeing 773ER
Hopefully this helps you differentiate when you see aircraft being referred to by their truncated form!