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3:58 PM HST Tuesday
Qantas orders more winglets
Jet fuel costs 64 percent more than it did a year ago, so sales are soaring for Blended Winglets, jetliner wing attachments that increase lift.
The Australian airline Qantas said Wednesday it has ordered a dozen more shipsets to bring to 33 the number of Boeing 737 jets it flies that have these gizmos attached.
In Hawaii, the Blended Winglet technology has been adopted by Aloha Airlines, which finds that the added lift not only reduces fuel consumption from 3 percent to 5 percent, but, since engines can be run at lower revolutions near airports, noise is also reduced.
Qantas, meanwhile, says the added lift means it can carry heavier cargo loads on short runways.
Aviation Partners Boeing makes the winglets. It's a joint venture between Aviation Partners Inc. and The Boeing Co.
It amazes me why QF and VB went for the 737NG aircraft choice selection (apart from having a heap of training crew already available)...don’t get me wrong for going capital city to capital city they are fine, heaps of runway, grooves etc...
But lets face it ...
...its still a 1960's design
...the 738 has worse landing and takeoff performance than a 762
...the 738 has worse takeoff performance than a 734
...on an ISA+20 day your A320 will always uplift more pax than your 738
...even with winglets, the 738 is 4% less efficient than an A320 in cruise
…brakes on the 738 were not improved much over the 734 but you have higher V speeds
...crews find them hard to slow down compared to the 734 (esp. with winglets)
...airlines are offloading 30+ pax when operating into some regional runways when wet
...airlines are operating out of some regional runways with less than 90 pax due poor runway performance
Maybe there is a good reason why Jetstar has gone airbus, to get an aircraft that you can load up out of a regional airport wet or dry, and you don’t have to pay millions to get winglets installed as an after thought….
:hmm: food for thought
:ok:
Opps... did not intend to get an AvB war started :ouch:
Sonny Hammond
26th May 2004, 08:23
It probably had something to do with the price Boeing offered them for.
Kwaj mate
27th May 2004, 00:39
It is estimated that for smaller airline fleets the 738W is more economical to operate over the A320, by about USD1.5m per annum.
For a large fleet, the savings are even more impressive.
Maintenance charges for the A320 are much higher than the 737NG and even with the higher fuel burn (about 3% for sectors over 2 hours) the NG is much more economical than the Airbus in all other respects.
For single aircraft fleets the Boeing is much more efficient.
For multi aircraft type airlines with fleet growth, the Airbus has a lot of crewing advantages and crewing can be as much as 11% of DOC's today.
Whilst on performance, the 757 has much more financial (ASK cost) performance & efficiencies; very impressive operational performance (so much better than the 762 & all 737 types); but does not have ULDs.
These are major discussion points & can not be covered in a few lines.
compressor stall
27th May 2004, 03:19
The order was sealed in the days after 11/9 and Ansett's collapse...and the price was insanely cheap.
Boeing had suddenly hundreds of aircraft on their books from airlines who had defaulted on their orders....
Buster Hyman
27th May 2004, 03:49
They were also part of a cancelled AA order...initially. Cost seems to be everything to QF these days!:rolleyes:
Kwaj mate,
Some interesting points you raised ....
"It is estimated that for smaller airline fleets the 738W is more economical to operate over the A320, by about USD1.5m per annum." I have heard this before, but it does not take into account the amount of money you have to pay Aviation Partners for the winglets, which costs you 2-3 years worth of savings. Over shorter routes, the winglets are more of a hassle then help, you need more time to slow the aircraft down, leaving it airbone longer. VB I understand does nto have them on aircraft that just do east coast routes for this reason.
The 738W has a Fuel/pax/nm (kg) of 0.0465, which is the same as the A321, the A320 is 0.0443, i.e. the differance between Fuel/pax/nm (kg) for the 738W and A320 is 4.87% (A320 being more efficent). This would mean a 738W would burn about 500,000l more fuel per year than an A320 over the same flight hours. Over a fleet if 20 aircraft, this is a savings of 8 million tonnes of fuel per year.
If your figures are different, I would be more than please to see them.
Maintenance - for new aircraft, parts warranty would cover parts costs for A or B. The A320 is quicker than the 738W, I am told by about M0.02, which would reduce maintenance and fuel costs.
A319/320/321 all have ULD capability, 737OG, 737NG, 757 do not.
"For single aircraft fleets the Boeing is much more efficient”. Easyjet are replacing the 737 with A319, Virgin US ordering 100+ A320 series, JetBlue with a large A320 series fleet. Airlines in our region such as Asiana Airlines, Valuair, Tiger Airwars, Sichuan Airlines, Air Macau, Dragonair, Silkair, Air New Zealand, Philippine Airlines, SriLankan Airlines, TransAsia Airways, Vietnam Airlines, Zhejiang Airlines, Jetstar all have it wrong then ? The only one I have seen reversing the trend towards buying airbus in our region ANA which I believe is replacing their A320/A321s with 738W for short sectors, where I am told the Dash 8-400 would actually do the flight quicker (not with the loads tho) !
Low cost carriers, don’t really care if they are late, they do care if they depart on-time, but the box will be set up for econ, I have heard of 737NG going YSSY-YSCH at FL400+ as the box reckons in econ mode this is the best, not going to give you the quickest flight time, but will reduce fuel burn, but increase maintenance costs.
I am just a lowly motor plane driver…so if you could educate me of fleet selection I appreciate it.
:8 :hmm: ;)
Kwaj mate
27th May 2004, 23:49
All too true SWH.
A major sales incentive for the Airbus product is the delivery time. The NG currently has a much longer delivery period, and the ability to deliver large fleet new equipment is important to the new carrier. Some new carriers even considered splitting their initial order to enable the quick introduction of aircraft.
Jetstar is able to provide initial & essential services as it has the 717 fleet while the Airbus is being delivered.
There is more to this than fuel burns.
As indicated, engineering/scheduled maintenance costs are an Airbus problem (much the same as Fokker had with their products) and this is something that a lot of carriers with higher than average utilisation (cycles & hours) find it really hurts the bottom line after only a couple of years.
Look at the way charter operators ordered 757's for trans Atlantic services services then went to the A330 for growth opportunities. ASK costs for the 757 were better than the A330 for smaller (7-10 aircraft) fleets.
In Australia the average cycle is less than 2 hours with the east coast traffic making this so. The NG is more suited to this type of operation than the Airbus of the same size.
There is the need to identify the markets that just pay, and the market that makes your bottom line big, bold & black. Then this market will define the aircraft most suited to the bottom line. The MD802/83 was a great accountant's aircraft as it was quick, never broke down (except for a few -217 problems in early days) and the first real two-man crew flight deck.
The NG does not have a lot of baggage today's budget passenger, so 'Cans' take too long to load and only with the NG can you turn an aircraft in 15 to 20 minutes. With all these short sectors the turns must dictate the overall daily utilisation. Again the NG is the choice aircraft.
If only it were a quick check of the performace charts & estimataion of fuel burns.
Oh, the extra cruise speed is not an issue, it depends on other average traffic on the day & most of all, the ability to get the plane in & out quickly.
Capt Basil Brush
28th May 2004, 01:30
swh,
Can you please post examples of airlines operating out of regional airports, with less than 90 pax due to performance.
738's will carry 180 pax out of Mackay for example, in the middle of summer with slightly less than 2000m (from memory) of runway. Cooly to Perth is another example.
I think their performance is better than you understand.
Capt Basil Brush,
An airline in Oz is restricted to 90 or less seats out of the Gold Coast on a long sector heading west, another airline offloads up to 30 pax when going to an Island off the QLD coast and it has a wet runway.
Dont think I have to name the respective carriers or routes, you should be able to work that out.
Another regional airport extended their runway for cater for the NG, they have had OG and 146, and A320 operations for a while. There would be more examples about, I don't know everything !
;)
Dehavillanddriver
28th May 2004, 03:59
I think you will find that the gold coast - west flights are capped somewhat higher than 90 pax.... though you are correct an 800 can't carry a full pax load under most circumstances...
does the 320 carry the same pax load as the 800 in a single class config?
DHD,
Think you run around with 177 in the 738, and 144 in the 737, the 320 will do 179+ single class, and easyjet have the 319's configured for 157 (with two over wing exits).
The low pax load out of the Gold Coast I was referring to a 737NG, dont assume I mean a 800 on a dry cool day, during summer (no jetstream), and no wx holding at PH. On a good day you get just about anything in and out of the Gold Coast.
:ok:
Sonny Hammond
28th May 2004, 06:38
180 people out of a 2000m strip across OZ through a roaring jetstream, ****e, you don't ask much!
Next you be asking Boeing to pull a rabbit out of its proverbial...
boeing7E7
1st Jun 2004, 10:07
firstly i dont think you will find a boeing aircraft going for less than an airbus aircraft!! this is one of the flaws of the boeing product. boeing is loosing sales world wide because of it. also one of the best things about the 737NG and all 737s is that the brakes cool in about 20 mins ready for takeoff, this was one of the disiding factors in VBs selection of the 737. the 737 is a versitile aircraft yet some things it is not designed for like most airliners today, they are designed to fit the specs of as many airlines as possible but unfortuanly not all.
do you know for a fact that the A320 can do the gold coast perth run better, i doubt that very much. QF has been extemely disapointed with the A330. it is loosing them a lot of money! i even heard that they cant fit the new international skybeds into the because the floor is too weak (typical airbus quality).i would say that that is why they will never buy the airbus for the main airline oporations again. the only reason that QF bought the A320 for Jetstar is because they got an amazingly cheap deal to go with the A380.