Originally Posted by
Going Boeing
My own speculation.
There are currently 18 A321 LR's and 36 A321 XLR's on order (firm) for the Qantas Group. The majority of these will go to JQ to replace the B787-8 on Asian routes - the B787's will transfer to mainline as replacements for the older A330's which are coming up for retirement but there has been no announcements about ordering more A330's or looking for a replacement. It's a good way to get mainline to pay for the heavy maintenance checks on the B787's.
At least 15 of those A321 orders will probably go to mainline to replace the 15 B737-800's that were ordered after the Ansett collapse, these are the oldest in the domestic fleet. This will give mainline an aircraft sized between the B737-800 & the A330-200 - they have been missing the B767 ever since they retired that fleet. Once the A321's have established themselves in mainline operations, the rest of the B737 fleet will be replaced by A320's & A321's over a 15 year period.
Mainline Domestic will eventually be an all Airbus operation and International will be all Boeing (after 2027) as the B777-8/9's will be ordered to replace the A380's and B787-10's will be ordered to replace the remaining A330's (the B747's have already been replaced - APPARENTLY).
There will be many that disagree with this but, time will tell.
That sounds pretty logical actually. The only small disagreement I'd have is that the shorter range (-10s) and some of the -8s will probably be used on Domestic as well if they are replacing the A330s so I would expect the narrow body mainline QF domestic fleet will be A320/A321neo and the wide body trans-continental duties will be performed by either 787-8 or 787-10 which will give the flexibility of a small or large 787 type wide body to operate in domestic and international. The original plan when the 115 orders/options for 787-8/787-9 was that the -8s would go to JQ and a mix of -8/-9 would go to QF and replace ALL of the A330s and 767s.
As I said in another post, I prefer Boeing but the proposition of the A320/21 and the ULD aspect as well as the efficiency of the aircraft is compelling and will probably win the day. Looking at it from a Group perspective then, "Qantas Group" will have essentially three main aircraft types in numbers - A320/A321, B787-8/-9/-10 and B777-8 or 9. One would expect the A220 will then replace all the F100s and B717s.