Originally Posted by
Ollie Onion
The problem with Jetstar though is they will get the A321 XLR with 240 seats on it which will severely restrict the range and also make passenger comfort unbearable for medium/long range operations. I note from the article above to achieve the maximum range airbus is saying a two or three class config with no more than 200 seats.
the max range mentioned in the article is 4700nm. JQ will only need about 3800nm to reach east coast Aus to its Asian destinations.
As for Pax config, the A321LRs will only have 232 seats, less than the maximum Airbus could’ve squeezed in. If the XLRs are configured to be primarily long haul they may have a few rows of business, perhaps bringing the seat count to around 220ish.
With an MTOW of 101T, Empty weight of around 52T (the NEOs engines are heavier) and 29T of fuel (max for worst case) that leaves 20T for payload. JQ plans on average of around 90kg per passenger inc bags which equates to 222 pax.
These are VERY rough numbers, but they illustrate that it could be possible.
Its also worth keeping in mind the savings for the company of returning to a single fleet. The costs of capping some flights from time to time v the costs of keeping a token fleet of wide bodies I think make this a very real possibility.