Old Ansett planes likely to stay parked
Fri "The Australian"
Old Ansett planes likely to stay parked
By Steve Creedy, Predictions
February 07, 2003
OFFICIALS at Boeing have bad news for Ansett's long-suffering administrators: the market for the failed airline's older planes remains grim and is likely to stay that way.
Boeing says in its latest market outlook the number of aircraft parked after September 2001 has stabilised at about 2000 aircraft, or about 12 per cent of the current world fleet. But only about 450 of the most modern planes are expected to return to service.
Airlines are eschewing older planes to buy new, more efficient aircraft as they rebuild schedules.
Boeing Commercial Airplanes vice-president of marketing Randy Baseler said in Sydney yesterday that Boeing believed most of the 1200 older aircraft would never return to service.
"There's really two reasons," he said. "One is that (these) airplanes are very inefficient compared to the newer airplanes on operating costs. But more importantly, airlines are trying to get rid of these airplanes to get their infrastructure costs down."
Mr Baseler outlined a cautiously optimistic view of the future which he said took into account a short war with Iraq but would have to be scrapped if the conflict was prolonged.
Boeing expects economic growth to return and traffic growth to rebound to its long-term trend and airlines will move back into the black by next year as they make consumers pay more.
It predicts a higher growth in air travel for the Asia-Pacific, with annual growth averaging 6.2 per cent, compared to a world average of 4.9 per cent and 3.5 per cent in North America. This would see the Asia-Pacific market triple in size and by 2021 become almost as big as North America.
Global growth is expected to drive a doubling of the world fleet over the next two decades as airlines need 24,000 new aircraft to meet demand and replace retiring planes. Barring a prolonged Iraqi conflict, Boeing expects air travel to recover this year in lagging markets such as the US and over the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Airlines are expected to maintain current levels of reduced capacity and, as traffic recovers, to begin to axe deeply discounted fares.
"Airline profits will return some time in late 2003-04," Mr Baseler said.
Boeing retains significantly different market expectations to European rival Airbus, particularly in the super jumbo category, and is concentrating its resources on intermediate size aircraft.