HONG KONG: Cathay Pacific’s New Fuel-efficient Airbus A350-1000 To Use 20 % Less Fuel

Cathay Pacific Airways is looking to control its jet fuel costs with new long-range planes that can take passengers further while using 20 per cent less fuel than its current Boeing 777 aircraft, as oil prices see-saw from geopolitical instability and trade war fears.

On Wednesday, its latest purchase, the technologically advanced, long-haul Airbus A350-1000, landed in Hong Kong, decorated in the airline’s green and white livery, after a 12-hour journey from the planemaker’s headquarters in Toulouse, France.

Hong Kong’s flag carrier is only the second airline to fly the long-range jet, after Qatar Airways. By 2021, it will have 20 of the A350’s larger twin-aisle, twin-engined planes in its fleet.

This will add to the current 22 smaller A350-900s it has, with six more of the planes to be delivered over the next two years.

Even as the airline’s chief customer and commercial officer Paul Loo Kar-pui endorsed the A350 jetliner as a high performer, he scotched Airbus’ hopes that one of its biggest customers would order more aircraft.

We are happy with where we are now, Loo said.

The impending deliveries mean the carrier will get about one new plane a month, which is around the right pace, Loo said. Cathay Pacific and its subsidiary Cathay Dragon fly to more than 200 destinations and have a fleet of almost 200 aircraft.

Airbus has faced a lull in orders of its A350 jets of late, and chief commercial officer Eric Schulz said it hoped the carrier would buy more aircraft.

But Schultz added he understood the company would refrain from a spending spree now as it had sizeable investments coming.

Aviation leaders at an annual gathering in Sydney this month cited rising oil prices as one major drag on airline profits.

Loss-making Cathay Pacific is still trying to move past bad fuel hedging bets made some years back, that locked it into agreements to buy fuel at a price higher than the market now offers.

It still has some paid-up fuel contracts made at US$80 a barrel, which will cover about 45 per cent of its fuel needs in the next two years.

The airline’s fuel costs, including losses from hedging, rose 11 per cent last year from the previous year to HK$31.2 billion.

The airline will use a number of its new A350-1000 planes – seating 334 passengers, including 256 in economy – to replace the 340-seater Boeing 777-300ER on several existing routes such as Amsterdam, Zurich and Madrid.

It will also use them on its newest destination and longest non-stop flight Hong Kong to Washington from September this year.

The airline will rework 65 of the Boeing planes, adding 10 per cent more economy seats. This will allow the carrier to move more passengers and raise revenue, amid a three-year restructuring and cost-cutting exercise.

Airbus executives noted how low oil prices over the past three years had induced airlines to extend the operating life of old aircraft or buy second-hand planes, rather than spending millions on new ones.

Marisa Lucas, head of marketing for the A350 ultra-long-range planes, said: When the prices of oil went down, it was easy to extend the life of the aircraft already in service.

If the oil prices start to go up, and there is a big uncertainty there, the most fuel-efficient planes are your natural hedging.

But she said rising oil prices had not shown signs of pushing up demand for new planes, for now.

The A350 has proved more reliable than its rival Boeing 787 series. While Boeing has had dozens of 787 planes grounded with engine problems, Airbus said it had not had a single shutdown during the 1.5 million flying hours for its A350 planes.

Both planes use Rolls-Royce engines, but different kinds.

Airbus has received 847 orders for the A350 series from 44 airlines so far. It has delivered 174 planes to 17 operators, including Qatar Airways, which owns a 9.94 per cent stake in Cathay Pacific.


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GERMANY: Lufthansa Orders 9 Airbus A320neo Planes

Lufthansa has firmed-up a previous option for six further Airbus A320neo.

The latest agreement brings Lufthansa Group’s total order for the A320neo to 122 - 77 A320neo and 45 A321neo.

In addition, the airline has signed an order for three more A320ceo, bringing the group’s A320ceo orders to 273.

With a total of 395 A320 Family aircraft on order, the Lufthansa Group is also Airbus’ biggest A320 operator with nearly 400 A320 Family aircraft in service.

Lufthansa was the launch operator of the A320neo.

We are delighted to see this additional order from our biggest A320 operator Lufthansa Group, said Eric Schulz, Airbus Chief Commercial Officer.

Benefitting from the Airbus commonality and the A320 Family’s efficiency and environmental credentials such as reduced noise, lower fuel-burn and emissions, we are pleased the airline has decided to come back for more.

The Airbus A320neo family is a development of the A320 family of narrow-body airliners, launched on 1 December 2010 by Airbus.

They are essentially a re-engine; neo stands for new engine option, with a choice of CFM International LEAP-1A or Pratt & Whitney PW1000G engines. The original family is now called A320ceo, for current engine option.

The first flight of the A320neo took place on 25 September 2014. It was introduced by Lufthansa on 25 January 2016. Airbus has 6,031 firm orders as of March 2018.

The new aircraft cabin offers a more modern look and feel, a new air purifier with filters and a catalytic converter removing unpleasant smells from the air before it is pumped into the cabin and light-emitting diodes for ambience lighting and passenger service unit.

It offers better and larger luggage storage. The flight crew controls the cabin through touchscreen displays.

The new Space-Flex optional cabin configuration increases space-efficiency by a new rear galley configuration and a Smart-Lav modular lavatory design allowing an in-flight change of two lavatories into one accessible toilet.

This allows up to 9 more passengers for the A320neo, and up to 20 more passengers for the A321neo without putting more sardines in the can with the larger Cabin-Flex modified exits.

Lufthansa is the launch operator of this standard variant. The first A320neo rolled out of the Airbus factory in Toulouse on 1 July 2014.

It first flew on 25 September 2014. A joint type certification from the European Aviation Safety Agency and the Federal Aviation Administration was received on 24 November 2015.

Nearly 28 years after the first A320, on 25 January 2016, the A320neo entered service with Lufthansa, the type's launch customer.

Six months later at Farnborough Airshow, John Leahy reported that the eight in-service aircraft had achieved 99.7% dispatch reliability.

After a year in service, Lufthansa confirmed the 20% efficiency gain per passenger with up to 180 seats, along with reduced noise and CO₂ emissions.

By the end of February 2017, 28,105 scheduled flights had been performed by 71 A320neo aircraft with 134 cancellations for a 99.5% completion rate.

Spirit faces Pratt & Whitney PW1000G issues on four of its five A320neos and don't fly them above 30,000 ft because the bleed air system froze shut on occasion due to cold temperatures, the same problem facing IndiGo.

By March 2017, 88 A320neos had been delivered to 20 airlines, 49 with the PW1000G and 39 with the CFM International LEAP-1A.

The fleet had accumulated more than 57,600 flight hours and 37,500 cycles (1.5h average); over 142 routes the average stage length is 900 nm and like the A320ceo the neo flies an average of 8.4 block hours and up to 10 cycles a day with Lufthansa operating 45 min. sectors from Frankfurt to Hamburg or Munich to China Southern Airlines flying close to 6 hr sectors.

Operators confirm the 15% per seat fuel-burn savings even counterbalanced by the added weight on short sectors, which can rise to 16–17% on longer routes and to 20% or more for Lufthansa with 180 passengers up from 168 with two more seat rows; and Airbus plans to deliver about 200 A320neos.


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