How bout us up here in Geordieland?

Airbus
 

Why would they be looking at a fleet upgrade to Airbus after building a £9million training facility filled with Boeing Simulators, Airbus must have been at Jet2 head offices, surely just for Engineering support? 😳

There's a fair bit of room at the new facility...

Why did easyjet change from Boeing to Airbus??

Price and the best deal same may happen here

I'm doubtful, I think it was more likely A330 related. I see it more likely LS getting a few A330's than changing their business model completely going from buying used Boeings 10+ years old to a brand new Airbus order.

Catch 22 for Jet2
 

I don't doubt that Jet2 could raise the funds to finance a new (as in direct from the factory) fleet, but their business model would struggle to support it, a new fleet would require far higher utilisation than what they could do with their current business model or current fleet. Jet2 do next to nothing in terms of point to point schedule flying outside of a few med destinations.

Whilst their fleet is now quite large, in pax volume they are a millions of pax light compared with Ryanair/easyJet/Norwegian, even Monarch move more and yes i know Jet2 are profitable, but that is probably a lot to do with the low capital cost of their current fleet

Yeah as you say, probably some of the only benefits of a new fleet would be that they could operate (or would be forced to operate) more high frequency, i.e operating 4/5 weekly where they currently operate 2 weekly, but that doesn't mean the routes are going to be profitable. And then there was something about their current fleet being mostly paid for so all they pay for is operating and maintenence. No need to pay for things like leasing etc.

They need to stick with what they're doing. It works. They need to know who they are and stick with it. You need your niche in aviation to make money and you need focus. Just ask AIr Berlin, MON and BD what happens when you don't know who you are trying to be. New Airbus and A330s will be the downfall of them.

"New Airbus and A330s will be the downfall of them."
Someones been to drama lessons ?! If you dont consider development and build slowly on existing experience, you stagnate and then thats when you sink

Jet2's business is widely misunderstood. .com is now Holidays's bitch. The business was diversified away from scheduled low cost towards package holidays back when the credit crunch hit, specifically to avoid a futile attempt to compete with RYR. It caused some internal strife, with the adjustments to working practices (and how it was mishandled) the primary reason for the Emirates exodus back in 09/10. It's now all about the package holiday customers. A low cost version of Thomas Cook / Thomson.

Recent comms tell us some flights now have 90%+ Holidays customers on board. If a coach is waiting for customers in Cyprus, deep night flying becomes commercially viable, which the current "Queens Of The Sky" cannot manage. That's the way the business is going and it seems to scream for a new, reliable, higher utilisable fleet.

Mixed fleet flying on A320/321/330 would be far more crew efficient (let's face it, crew utilisation is pathetic, most Jet2 crew don't see the "wrong" side of 500 hours a year).

The crux of the matter. As the fleet ages, maintenance is becoming crippling. I heard LU is soon to be scrapped due to maintenance costs going through the roof. The NEO vs the classic's fuel burn is probably enough of a cost saving alone.

You don't have to go back too far for it to have been utterly unthinkable that Jet2 would build a state of the art training centre. "But they couldn't afford it"...

Artie Fufkin
 

Yep agree with much of your analysis, but with Jet2 holidays driving the flying program the business becomes more seasonal, package holiday volume in winter are a fraction of the summer volume and it is for that reason that Jet2 sensibly lease in capacity during the peak 4 month period, but being a package means ATOL and cradle to the grave care when something goes wrong, which they do (both), they could not run the current fleet at the sort of utilisation that the big Lo Co's do and have any chance at an on time performance, as you say stay in your niche and gradually replace the classics with newer kit.

Surely they can continue operating as they are with used aircraft, they can still get "new" A/C just not necessarily factory fresh.

i.e they have the classics while everyone else has the NG's, they're starting to get the NG's now as everyone else starts to get neo's and MAX's, which they can have while everyone else has the MAX 2.0 and the A320eneo (even newer engine option)

They can operate used aircraft acceptably reliably with a non strenuous yet still quite high utilisation over the summer, and still not haemorrhage money over the winter with half the fleet on the ground.

I really want to see the A330 happen, I'm glad it is (or they are definitely on track), I agree it will be risky but I think they can make it work, I have faith in them. Even if it fails, it will be tragic, but I don't think it would finish them off.

Looking forward to this A330 arrival. I wonder if it will be reliveried for the summer?

Hope so, it would be mighty pretty

Maybe , they are looking at the 330's because they can't find any half decent 767's that have been rumoured in the past several times , once the next gen 330's and 350's come online , older versions of the 330 will be coming up for grabs . Would imagine the numbers have been crunched over and over , slow and steady seems to be working well for them, and no reason why in the future it won't still, I think if anything , is what will they use to replace the 737 300's with , or will they just get phased out , replaced with more 800's , or would they likely look to pick up a mix or 319/320's ? Personally think they'd likely stick with the 737's and have a small Airbus long haul fleet . Fast forward 10 years , maybe pick up some second hand early build 787's :ok::ok::ok:

Yeah those second hand terrible teen 78's will be right up LS's street.

I think they should be looking in EK's direction for A330's

I thought they would of stuck with Boeing but thumbs up to them for getting something as big as that. I just wonder how long they will keep the 75's for.

airbus
 

they used to have a couple of a300 freighters be for they got into passengers in a big way.
they were converted to freighters in filton bristol.
it was nice to watch them with crew training out of filton.

Midhaul
 

The 'Bus they are leasing is an A330-343. Trent engines and not the very latest bells and whistles HGW version.

That makes it the ideal plane for Canaries midhaul sectors or packed to the rafters with Alicante and Palma passengers. I'd expect it might see plenty of Dalaman and Paphos too. That A333 variant might not be ideal for flying over the pond but as for the LS and Holidays core routes it would fit quite nicely. High capacity, medium range.

LS also has to integrate BLK's flying into the MAN operation for next summer's forward bookings and hopefully it'll swell those ALC and other routes for them. Having a people mover on the strength is a no-brainer and the A330-343 fits the bill nicely.

A330
 

If its Air Asia X as the donor airline, one old as the hills aircraft is a -301 GE engined variant, and possibly unable to go TATL. The rest are -343E variants, built between 2005 and 2014, and unless they are equipped as short to medium haul only, I suspect would be well capable of TATL operations.

Maybe someone would know the differences in more detail?