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It’s the festive season, so let’s all relax and take a peek into the future at what might be, if only … This is Newsdesk, January issue year 2000.
Qantas Accepts Final A340
Qantas accepted the 15th and final in its order for Airbus A340-300LRs on Christmas Eve. “The type has allowed us to pioneer a whole range of new and exciting services previously beyond the airline’s capability,” stated Chief Executive Sandra Macintyre at the naming ceremony. Qantas took delivery of its first A340-300LR in 1998 and uses the 280-seat three-class aircraft largely to support its daily European capital services from its large Bangkok, Singapore, and KL hubs. Since going daily (during the peak season) to Rome, Athens, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Belgrade, and Vienna, the airline has seen traffic to these ports soar with a corresponding increase in priority non-discounted air cargo also now featuring nicely in the airline’s revenue analysis. On several of the routes, Qantas also codeshares with the host carrier which allows better market penetration in that country while offsetting some of the A340’s capacity against pre-sold seats to the participating airline. Sandra Macintyre made a point that despite strong opposition from within certain sections of the ‘older’ Qantas establishment at the time, the decision to buy an aircraft like the A340 and target these routes which had largely been ignored by Qantas since the seventies, had been proven to have been the correct option in developing the airline beyond its previous fixation with concentrating its focus on LA, London, and some of Asia. “When I took the helm, the first thing I wanted to do was to take advantage of these untapped markets,” stated Ms. Macintyre. “After all, it was as plain as day that we were missing a great opportunity with DoT stats telling us that year after year more than half the people flying to Europe didn’t even want to go to the UK. We lost most of that traffic to our Asian competitors year in and year out, who also turned out to be aligned with our competitor’s frequent flyer plan and so we lost out on both counts.” Qantas presently operates a primary jet fleet comprising 15 A340s, 44 747-400s, 35 767s, and more than 60 737s.
RAAF to Rebuild Hornets?
Following confirmation that the fatigue life of the RAAF’s F/A-18 Hornet fleet is running out much sooner than expected, McDonnell Douglas has offered an unsolicited proposal in developing a programme whereby the RAAF’s aircraft are rebuilt to E standards. A similar proposal has been put to the US Navy, which is seriously looking at an upgrade of some 500 early build F/A-18 A/Cs. The USN stated in November that the project cost of upgrading the existing aircraft to full zero-timed E standards was $US18m a plane, about a third the cost of a new Super Hornet. It is expected that Australia could dovetail in on the USN programme whilst keeping the work in Australia with ASTA Defence at Avalon being the primary contractor. The US Government has also offered Australia an additional batch of A-model Hornets, believed to be 20 aircraft, at $US6m a unit, which could also factor into the upgrade to ultimately bring total RAAF Super Hornet strength to some 90 aircraft. With the Spratly dispute worsening in recent months and the civil disturbances in Papua New Guinea becoming an international UN quagmire, it is expected that the Government will opt for the additional aircraft if the upgrade decision is in the affirmative. A decision is expected by year-end while recent ARL data suggests that the bulk of our existing Hornet fleet will be G-limited by 2005 at the latest.
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