41 replies to this topic

[Marb1]

I don't think that would work on busier long-haul flights which tend to get full.

We did it a lot on the CX 777. Booked seats A and C or H and K.

[TNT88]

Reasons:

 

Even though A330 is an older aircraft. It's actually one of the most fuel efficient aircraft in the world right now (talking about the A330-300 here). It's performance are even comparable to modern aircrafts like the A350 and B787.

What happen is, unlike any other aircrafts on the market. A330 is getting popular at the middle and at the end of its production life. Because Airbus keep improving the range and fuel efficiency of A330, the current state of the plane is actually way better compared to the plane we saw 2 decades ago. And if you see at this charts: https://en.wikipedia..._and_deliveries

A330-300 actually only started to become popular after the year of 2004 (10 years after it's original launch). And after 2010, the A330-300 actually exploded into the market after Airbus offered an increased weight option to 235tons for A330-300. And they eventually increased the take off weight to 242tons. Which is welcomed by many airlines that could use the A330-300 for longer routes up to 13 hours Or Greater Payloads. This is one of the main reason why A330-300 is suddenly becoming extremely successful in recent years.

 

Which bring me to this conclusions: Many of the A330-300 is extremely young in ages. Many of the aircraft is not even 5 years old yet. Airbus received 442 orders of A330-300 even after 2010. Which is 16 YEARS after it's original launch in 1994. B777-200ER dies only after 10 years of production and launch. 2007 saw the end of big B777-200ER orders.

 

A330-300 also outsold B777-200ER and B777-300ER respectively. Both A330-200 and A330-300 sold 1445 frames while the B777-200ER and B777-300ER only sold at 1189 frames. (not the same aircraft in terms of range and capacity but it's one of the most popular wide-body aircraft at that time).

Unlike B777-200ER which falls out of favor of most airlines, A330-300 and even the "less economical" A330-200 keep selling well into the 2020. Even A330-200 received 247 new orders from 2010 onwards.

So, Airlines doesn't need A330NEO when they still have 5 year old A330CEO on their hand. Also, because of the low fuel consumptions and smaller capacity, many airlines choose to keep operating A330 until it's reached its maximum life span. Hence many airlines would be needing new replacement around 2025 to 2030 instead. And since the backlog isn't even that big for A330NEO, they could just ordered new plane in 2024 and get their replacement few months later. So, we'll see how it's gonna work out in 6 to 7 years after this.

 

We see the same patterns with A350. While A350-900 is selling well, the A350-1000 would eventually picked up orders in few years down the road. Especially when now, Airlines started to cut back on capacity on many major routes. Hence why most airlines started retiring jumbo jet and opted for Aircrafts with smaller capacity like B777-300ER to replace B747-400 or A380. Or how airlines converting some of their A350-1000 orders to A350-900.