Originally Posted by
Iver
BTW, I think the A330 is a brilliant move at these prices and because it is a workhorse for many other British operators across the Pond. It will be perfect for those Orlando trips.
Actually the A330-300 that Virgin have ordered is not operated by any other British operators, across the Atlantic or elsewhere. A number of the minor British companies do have the A330-200, a notably shorter and different aircraft. The nearest you get to an A330-300 Transatlantic fleet is the Aer Lingus one. However in the time since they built up this fleet (Aer Lingus were an early adopter of the type in the early 1990s) it has been steadily developed in capability.
The main issue for the airline world about the Boeing 787 is that they cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel, cannot see reliability about future delivery dates, and cannot even see that Boeing have got the problems gripped technically. As happens with large organisations there has too long been an emphasis on conformance to original budgets, and then on minimising any additional cost budgets, at the expense of understanding what the engineering issues really require to overcome them, or being given the money to do so.
Word goes around that if Boeing were still headquartered in Seattle, instead of thousands of miles from where the problems are, and if people like old CEO Phil Condit who understand aircraft (and everything else about the business) were still in place rather than a string of jumped-up accountants, things would be a lot different.