Boeing 787 and Airbus A380 Updates!
Lots happening with the 787 at the moment. Eleven have now been finished by Boeing. With orders of over 800, they have a lot of work to do!
Japan Airlines (JAL) received its first two 787s last month out of its total order of 45 Dreamliners. They plan to use the planes to increase international services by 25 percent by 2017.
On Sunday 22nd April, they flew the first scheduled 787 Dreamliner passenger service into the USA, with its new Tokyo to Boston service, the first time ever theSE two cities have been linked by direct AIR service. JAL will fly the 14 hour hop four times a week: From Boston: Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. .This shows the potential of then plane combining its capacity and range. The carrier says it has bookings for about 98 percent of seats this month and 90 percent for May which is an excellent situation for the airline (less so for us passengers who like a spare seat next to them!).
The airline plans to add a new service to San Diego with the Dreamliner. This will be followed by Helsinki in February. They will then replace 767 and 777 aircraft on services to Moscow, New Delhi and Singapore.JAL are suggesting services to London and New York will be boosted and services to Madrid (Hub of One World partner: Iberia), Berlin and Dusseldorf (hub of another One World partner: Air Berlin). They may re open flights from Osaka’s Kansai and Nagoya airports that weren’t profitable with 777s.
Japan’s other major carrier and 787 launch customer All Nippon Airlines (ANA) received their latest 787 this week. It completed a transpacific biofuel flight from Boeing’s Delivery Center in Everett, Washington to Tokyo Haneda Airport. The plane was powered by a mix of regular aviation fuel and used cooking oil! ANA currently have five 787s; four are flying domestically and one is flying Tokyo-Frankfurt. They will begin flying Tokyo to Seattle from July 25 with a 777 , and some time in the year, will switch to a 787. The airline itself, announced a record profit for 2011 so it looks like we will have 787s in Boeing colours for a while.
This week, the first Boeing plane made outside the state of Washington since World War II* rolled off Boeing’s new assembly line in Charleston, South Carolina for delivery to Air India. Another three 787s will be built at the plant this year – all for delivery to Air India. Boeing, are aiming to build 10 787s per month by the end of 2013, with three produced each month in South Carolina. The current 787 production rate is 3.5 per month so they have a way to go. Everett also will be focussing on the rollout of the 737NEO. Boeing has apparently bought another 200 acres near the Charleston plant for future expansion. *If you don’t count the Boeing 717 which was really a MD plane built in Long beach
My question is: when will I get to fly a Dreamliner? I had hoped to do it for my 787th flight but that is long past. Maybe for my 878th flight? That is a mere 28 plane trips away!
There are now 73 A380s in service worldwide with 7 airlines:
- Air France has six. Here is my January 3, 20112 review of their A380 Premium Economy Product which I scored at 78%
- China Southern has three. I have not flown their plame yet
- Emirates has 22. Review AKL-SYD September 30th, 2010 -Economy – My score: 92%
- Korean is up to five. My December 27., 2011 review of Economy scored them 86%
- Lufthansa is flying eight. See my October 11, 2011 review of Lufthansa‘s A380 Economy 80%
- Qantas has 12 of the planes. My rating of their A380 Premium Economy gave them 87%. No review yet.
- Singapore is up to 17 planes. No review from me but I gave them a rating of 83%
Malaysian Airlines first A380 is in mid testing stage.
The big news was the formal handing back to Qantas of their Airbus 380 named Nancy Bird Walton. This is the plane that dramatically “lost an engine” in a mid-air blast off Singapore in November 2010. I have previously blogged about how dangerous the incident was.. The incident dented both the reputation of Qantas as one of the world’s safest airlines (despite the fact the crew managed to nurse the plane into a safe landing) and the reputation of the giant plane. (The concerns some have about the 380 have been further heightened by hysteria over the wing cracks that have been found recently. Qantas is denying they are considering suing Airbus over the cracks but they are in discussions over the cost). The Financial Times reports that Airbus is ”
“cutting the production rate for the A380 from 2.7 aircraft each month to 2.3 for the next two quarters, as it goes about mending defective components in the superjumbo’s wing structure.”
VH-OQA was formally handed back to Qantas last Saturday after what the airline said was ”one of the biggest repair jobs in aviation”. The repair took 18 months and cost $A139 million ($US144 million). It required nearly 100,000 hours of work by 170 Airbus staff from eight countries. The repairs were carried out at the hangar of Singapore International Airlines Engineering subsidiary. The airline’s insurance company paid for the repairs and engine-maker Rolls-Royce compensated the airline Aus$95 million for the grounding of the aircraft.
Captain Richard de Crespigny, who was piloting the aircraft when the blast happened, received the flight log book from Airbus engineers and flew the plane back to Sydney where it departed for its first commercial flight to Hong Kong. Picture from the Canberra Times.
