Hong Kong Airlines has placed an order for 10 Airbus A380s with Airbus which makes the order worth $3.8 billion worth at list prices. Airbus plans to start the delivery to the airlines from 2015 onwards.

While the  Hong Kong Airlines order still hasn’t appeared in Airbus’s order and delivery figures on the Internet, It will bring Airbus’s order tally for A380s to 27 won last year, when the manufacturer also signed contracts with Japan’s Skymark Airlines and South Korea’s Asiana Airlines Inc. for six each, and a further five for Qatar Airways Ltd. further strengthening its position in superjumbo market and also helping it overcome the recent bad press it has had to face due to a string of issues with the A380′s that belong to Qantas and Singapore Airlines. What remains to be seen is how and when will the program turn into a profitable version for Airbus given that right now it is heavily reliant on the large chunk of the orders from Emirates for the A380 which makes up a considerable percentage of the total.

Cathay Pacific has announced the launch of its new Premium Economy class and also an overhaul of its international economy seating. The airline to bring these changes onto its aircrafts starting March 2012 with the firs flight from Hong Kong to Sydney. The other routes which will be getting the Premium Economy seating will be Singapore, New York, Toronto and Vancouver followed by other destinations.

In contrast to the usual practice of placing Premium Economy seats in the same cabin as Econ0my, Cathay plans to create a seperate cabin space for the same having 26 to 34 seats based on the aircraft config. The Seat pitch will be 38 inches, which is six inches more than Economy Class and 19.3 inches wide, with an 8 inch recline and will have a large meal table, cocktail table, footrest, a 10.6-inch personal television, in-seat power outlet, a multi-port connector for personal devices andnoise-cancelling headphones. Economy Plus passengers will be welcomed aboard with juice and champagne, and get an enhanced onboard meal selection, they will also receive a bottle of water and additional snack choices to include more fresh fruit, energy bar and dessert.

In order to prove its point of being an Economy plus and not a Business minus, Cathay will provide priority check-in at dedicated counters and priority boarding ahead of Economy Class passengers. The baggage allowance will also be increased from 20kg to 25kg (for luggage allowances measured according to weight) or two pieces of baggage from 23 kg to 25kg each (for allowances measured by the number of pieces).

The new Premium Economy cabin will be installed on all Cathay Pacific long-haul aircraft including Boeing 777-300ERs, Boeing 747-400s, Airbus A330-300s and Airbus A340-300s with the first ones being rolled out in service in March. Cathay plans to have 87 aircraft fitted with the product by the end of 2013. In order to add the Premium Economy cabin inside its Boeing 777-300ERs, the airline will remove the first class cabin and also reduce the number of business class seats which is really a sad decision  for people like me who love to redeem their OneWorld miles for the Cathay First Class experience but from the airlines perspective, it makes much more economic sense.

The Economy fixed shell seating will be replaced with new recliner which is a long overdue change in my sense given the fact that how uncomfortable those shell seats were, this will really help enhance the Economy Class experience.

All in all the changes seemed to be geared towards bringing in much more customers to experience better comfort abeit at a lower price point, am just waiting to get to try the Economy Plus cabin for whatever benefits that are being promised by the airline.

Malaysia Airlines is planning to start its A380 service from KL-London Heathrow from 2nd July 2012, As per the information provided at Airlineroute.net The 503 seater aircraft will be operating 3 times a week service initially and switch to daily service from 15th August 2012. The reservation for the same is open and the schedule will be as follows:

Kuala Lumpur – London Heathrow

MH002     KUL      2340 – 0550+1    LHR
MH003     LHR     1200 – 0725+1     KUL

The airline has opted for a 3 cabin configuration with 8 First Class seats on the Lower deck, 52 Business Class seats on the Upper deck and 96 Economy seats on the Upper Deck and 347 Economy seats on the Lower deck. For more details check out the link here.

Given that Malaysia Airlines and KLM have quite close links, people had been placing best on Amsterdam to be first city to be served by the A380 but now given that Malaysia airlines is set to join the OneWorld alliance Kuala Lumpur-London Heathrow route makes perfect sense and also with the Olympic games approaching British Airways would relish the idea of the superjumbo from the alliance bringing in traffic to the city. Now here is the catch, Malaysia Airlines will get the delivery of the aircraft in the Q1 2012 so you never know if they have any other plans in mind to fly the aircraft in the meantime. Till then folks who want to fly on the MH A380, let the bookings begin.

The second update is that Air France will replace the Boeing B777-200ER/-300ER on its daily Paris-Dubai flight with an Airbus A380, the change will be in effect from 5th December 2011 until the end of the Winter schedule i.e. 25th March 2012. This seems to be a great strategic move for luring customers from the Middle East markets to the Air France hub at Paris Charles DeGaulle Airport and undercut competition posed by the Middle East carriers specially Emirates. The schedule for the same would be as follows:

Paris Charles DeGaulle – Dubai

AF3830      CDG     1330 – 2300    DXB
AF3831       DXB     0145 – 0610     CDG

Just saw it on the Airbus website that JetBlue has placed a firm order for 40 A320neo aircraft with an with an option to convert 30 of its pre-existing orders for A320s to the larger A321 model with enhanced wingtip devices called Sharklets.

This is a finalization of the order placed by the airline at the Paris Air show in June this year, with this finalization JetBlue currently has on order 40 A320neo aircraft, 30 A321s and 22 A320s. This is definitely a big win for Airbus and the A320neo aircraft which has proved to be a highly successful model for the aircraft manufacturer. With this now Airbus has a order backlog of about 1200 A320neo’s, which promise to be 15% more efficient than the current versions.

With a primarily A320 fleet JetBlue seems to be well focused on keeping a homogenous fleet which will help it keep maintenance costs at the minimal. As of now it seems Airbus is on a roll with Boeing not even seen in distant sight.

Bahrain’s state owned carrier, Gulf Air plans to fit its new aircraft with its new state of the art ‘Sky Hub’ Inflight Entertainment (IFE) system. The technology will allow passengers to watch live TV, receive text messages and access social-media networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

The first aircraft to be fitted with the ‘Sky Hub’ system will be an A330-200, of which Gulf Air recently took delivery. The airline plans to offer the service for free in the first few weeks while the system is being tested on-board. Once the airline’s other aircraft get upgraded with the new IFE system, the airline plans to start charging for the Internet at a cost of $15.91 per hour of use while Phone-call charges will be the same as roaming charges and payments will go through standard telephone bills.

The airline plans to offer Live satellite TV featuring sports games, stock-market updates. The airline which is in the midst of a 3 year re-organization to better compete with other Middle-East carriers believes that the millions of dollars of investment in the new system would pay off in 4-5 years from the revenue generated by the usage charges collected from its customers. Lets see how successful this new endeavor proves to be and what other airlines think about implementing the same.

As announced by Qantas earlier in August 2011, Qantas and Airbus have sealed a contract for 110 Airbus A320 aircraft which makes it the largest order in Australian aviation history.

The deal is a combination of 78 of the A320neo aircrafts which are scheduled to join the service from 2016 onwards and 32 A320s, which will be delivered to the carrier starting 2013. The A320 and the A320neo which have proven to be a bumper product for the Airbus group and have generated substantial order book for Airbus are intended to be used on both the short and medium haul domestic and international routes for the carrier’s low-cost venture in Japan, Jetstar Japan, and the new Asian-based premium carrier whose regional base is currently pending decision but as per recent reports Singapore (current biggest Qantas hub outside Australia) and Kuala Lumpur (OneWorld elect partner Malaysia Airlines hub) seem to be front-runners in the race.

Qantas is aiming to use the successful low-cost model and the Asian targeted premium airline to help it capture market share in the expanding Asian airline market and also help cut down the losses at its international operations. What remains to be seen is as to how does the airline plan to bring a media strategy so that people identify the many brands being associated with Qantas.

China Southern is on its way to become the first Chinese carrier to get the Airbus A380 this month, The official event is scheduled for October 14 at Airbus headquarters at Toulouse, France.

The airline plans to operate the aircraft domestically on the Beijing-Guangzhou route from October 18 and then switch it over to Beijing-Shanghai route from October 27 onwards. In this context the carrier becomes the first airline to operate the jumbo on a domestic route.

China Southern will offer 506 seats configuration in a three-class layout with 8 First, 70 Business and 428 Economy class seats which is in line with the configuration that other A380 operating airlines are operating with the exception of Korean Air which is operating the jumbo with a  407 seat config. The airline has 5 firm orders for the A380 till date.

This is also a big step for the Skyteam alliance as China Southern becomes the 3rd carrier in the alliance after Air France and Korean Air to operate the A380. The alliance is already on a strong footing in the booming China market with 3 Chinese airlines as its partners and the addition of the A380 will certainly enhance its image in terms of a quality product offering.

Emirates, the world’s biggest international airlines plans to start serving the US cities of Dallas and Seattle from 2012 onwards.

As per the Bloomberg report, Emirates will begin daily services from Dubai to Dallas starting Feb. 2 and to Seattle from March 1 and may add cities including Atlanta,Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington very soon. The airline plans to serve these routes using an A380 of which it has placed an order of nearly 90 and intends to add more in the Dubai Airshow to be held in November this year.

The airline seems to be betting bigtime on the A380′s which will add nearly 45,000 seats to its network, it recently started the first scheduled flight to Africas with a regular flight to Johannesburg.

Even in the slowing economy the airline is considering a ramp up as it is expecting demand to stay consistent or increase in the near future. The airline had scaled down its initial US expansion after the September 11 attacks but now seems to be back in action to target major cities in the US and also look for code-share partners after Continental scrapped the earlier agreement between the two in 2009.

The only factor limiting their current growth is current capacity limitation at their current hub at the Dubai airport which is currently undergoing a massive expansion to meet the growing demand. What remains to be seen is that what strategy it will employ to handle such a rapid growth trajectory in terms of employee base, capital requirements and other external factors. All in all from a passenger point of view it seems to be a very good news as Emirates is known to offer one of the best products in the market along with the most competitive fares on its routes. Its high time now that the Airline companies in the US fastened their seatbelt and improved their product offerings else risk their market share being eaten up by carriers of the like of Emirates which have raised the bar in terms of quality offering  and better price value for its consumers.

Etihad is planning to roll out Wifi on its European routes from December this year, The initial plan as outlined by the Etihad CEO James Hogan is that they plan to have 2 aircrafts by the end of this year and a total of 5 by March 2012.

The airline is in the process of identifying a fleet-wide connectivity solution as part of its future plans. Of the five aircraft to be part of the scheduled rollout, three of them will be Airbus A330-300s, which will operate between Abu Dhabi and cities like Frankfurt, Geneva, London, Munich and Paris.

The airline plan seems to be to test the solution on these flights and then if the experimentation is successful, launch it on most of its International routes specially the ones to USA. From a business travelers perspective, this is a welcome decision as it would help people stay connected all the time which is really a helpful way. Airlines in the US have already implemented this successfully using the GoGo WiFi which has proved to be an instant hit. Hoping to see more airlines follow the suit and bring Wifi on-board.

Singapore Airlines is offering 50% redemption discount on online redemptions for selected Singapore Airlines and SilkAir flights in Business and Economy Class. The flights need to be booked between 26 September and 9 October 2011 and the travel needs to be completed between 1 October and 30 November 2011 to benefit from this promotion.

The available destinations for this offer are:

These discounts are available for both one-way and round-trip redemption but not for applicable for Upgrades.
For more details check out the link here

Overall I think is good promotion to grab seats one some really nice routes at a huge discount. So if you have any travel plans during the offer period or just want to experience the SQ luxury in the A380 and B777-300ER then this is your shot at it for half the price. But you will need to hurry as i doubt the seats will last for long.