A second wind

A point of interest with the A330 is that it is one of the few aircraft where there are options from all three major engine makers – the GE CF6, Pratt & Whitney PW4000 and Rolls-Royce Trent 700 are all available.

Interestingly, in the past few years and despite the prevalence of the Boeing 787 and A350 in the media, sales of the A330 have been at their strongest and today there are over 890 A330s in service with 324 still to be delivered.

Airbus head of worldwide marketing and executive VP sales Kiran Rao told Australian Aviation that even at the execu-tive level, it was expected that with the A350’s relaunch as the A350XWB in 2007, the A330 would naturally fade into the background as most customers opted for the newer composite aircraft with its better operating economics.

“A lot of us all felt that the A330 would start to enter the twilight of its career but we all got it wrong,” he said. “We have now sold more A330s since the launch of the 787 and the A350 than we did before. ” The result – Airbus has increased pro-duction to keep up with demand and from 2014 will produce 11 aircraft a month from its final assembly line at Toulouse.

In part, some of those sales have come from the delays to the 787 program, while recent slips on the A350 seem to show it also will face development problems.

A number of carriers such as Virgin Atlantic, Qantas and Jetstar have ordered or leased A330s to allow for growth that had originally been planned for their 787s, which will now arrive many years later than expected.

More recently, Virgin Australia has become a new A330 operator since it took delivery of two ex-Emirates, Rolls-Royce Trent-powered A330-200s in May last year. These have since been joined by three new-build aircraft with a fourth due before the end of the year. All the new aircraft are leased from Aircastle and CIT.

Virgin uses its A330s mainly on the Perth-Melbourne and Perth-Sydney routes and on some Sydney-Melbourne services. The airline announced recently that it wants all Perth services to Sydney and Melbourne to be operated by the A330s by this Christmas.

Qantas also has been a long-term A330 operator and took delivery of its first A330-300 in 2003. Today, it operates a fleet of 10 -300s and eight -200s.

As with Virgin, Qantas uses its A330s extensively on transcontinental routes while its A330-300s are used predominately on regional international routes into Asia. Some of its -200s briefly operated long-hauls from Auckland to Los Angeles before moving back to the domestic market.

A330s also are flown by Jetstar on its longer services into Asia and Honolulu with the carrier taking the original four A330-200s ordered by Qantas in 2006. It had planned to replace them a year later with 787-8s, but with the chronic delays to that aircraft it has increased its A330 fleet to 11.

Interestingly, some carriers already have indicated that their A330s will fly along-side their new-generation widebodies into the future.

Airbus also has launching the A330-200 Freighter, the first of which entered service in September 2010. It can carry a payload of up to 70t and a range of up to 5,950nm. The manufacturer has also launched a A330-300P2F and -200P2F freighter conversions and is studying a new-build A330-300 Freighter.

Mr Rao says part of the appeal of the A330 and its success in the market recently has been the continual type improvements, a major boost being better payload and range of both passenger variants. Since it launched in 1992, the A330-300’s maxi-mum takeoff weight has increased from 212t to 235t through a series of upgrades while its range has also increased by 1,600nm.

Then at the Farnborough Airshow in June, Airbus announced another increase in weight, to 240t, and range – 7050nm for the -200 and 5950nm for the -300 – to be available on aircraft being delivered from 2015 onwards, demonstrating that it has no plans to drop the aircraft from its catalogue any time soon.

Coming Into Its Own

Despite even its own admissions that it expected to see demand for A330s subside as airlines ordered large numbers of the 787 and its own A350, Airbus now expects to see a number of A330s operating alongside the new generation aircraft, particularly on shorter sectors.

Mr Rao said: “Those aircraft come into their own when you start flying above 4,000nm. If you still want to fly 2,000- 3,000nm then the A330’s economics are still superior to those of the new generation aeroplanes.

“Even though the A350 and 787 are more fuel-efficient on long-haul sectors, when you come down to shorter-haul sec-tors when the fuel efficiency doesn’t kick in, the engine maintenance costs, the acquisi-tion costs, the lightness of the aircraft are all factors that favour the A330. ” Recent experience in Asia seems to effectively confirm this. During the past decade, carriers such as Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines and Cathay Pacific have opted either to increase the numbers of or introduce A330s to their fleets for a range of regional international routes, including many to Australia.

“If you’re flying from Sydney into Singa-pore and Singapore onto somewhere deep into Europe with a full pax load of 320

“Since the start of the A330 program, we have increased the range by over 2,000nm by pushing the takeoff weight up to 240 tonnes. ”

core markets including Australia, China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. ” There also are indications that more planned long-haul LCCs in the region are looking to the A330 to launch services. Philippines-based low-cost carrier Cebu Pacific Air already has laid out plans to acquire eight A330-300s to launch services to the Middle East and Australia in the second half of next year.

CEO Lance Gokongwei said: “The A330-300 will give us the lowest cost per seat, allowing us to drive long-haul fares 35 per cent lower than those offered by other airlines, and as much as 80 per cent lower when Cebu offers promo fares. This aircraft type is very well suited to the kind of network we want to build and the routes we want to launch. ” Cebu is rumoured to be looking to operate its A330s in a tight, 10-abreast all-economy layout, which would deliver some of the lowest seat-kilometre costs in the industry.

Bulking Up

While the delays to the 787 and A350 have helped create a market for the A330 to bridge the capacity gap, Airbus has con-tinued to invest in research and develop-ment, resulting in the launch of the new heavier versions at Farnborough.

The higher gross weight variant will enter service in 2015, initially on the larger A330-300. This will give it an additional 400nm range, taking it out to 5,950nm, while also adding an extra 5t payload com-pared with the current spec aircraft.

The increase in weight also will yield a 250nm increase in range for the -200, taking its range to 7,050nm, and a 2. 7t increase in payload. Airbus has not yet announced when the first increased weight -200s will be available.

The company says it will also apply the weight increase to the A330 Freighter in the future but has not yet released what sort of range increase and payload will result.

But it does say this will make the -300 capable of operating nonstop services between London and Tokyo, Beijing and Melbourne and Paris and Kuala Lumpur.

The new variant also will offer refined aerodynamics and engine improvements to bring down fuel burn by about two per cent. With the increase, the -300 is expected to better complement the longer ranging -200s by allowing airlines to add more capacity on more routes while bring-ing down the per seat operating costs. This in turn could see more -200s used to open up new routes or add more frequencies.

Airbus’s Mr Rao says the decision to increase the weight of the aircraft was somewhat logical, as it was a step that Air-bus had taken before: “Since the start of the A330 program, we have increased the range by over 2,000nm by pushing the takeoff weight up to 240t. ” Lessor CIT is the only customer so far to have committed to the higher gross weight A330-300 and Malaysia Airlines and AirAsia X have publicly noted their interest. Virgin Australia is expected to cast its eye over the aircraft in future, as the extended range could allow it to grow its international fleet and complement its Boeing 777-300ERs on some longer routes.

While welcomed by a number of carriers and analysts, the increased weight fell short of speculation that more radical options were being discussed for the A330.

Given the strongly positive reaction to the A320neo, there had been strong specu-lation Airbus could work to offer new-generation engines for the A330 (a concept not too dissimilar to the original A350 design).

Mr Rao admitted that the company did look at options to integrate the GE GEnx and Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 but the extra costs dissuaded them: “They have a better specific fuel consumption but when you install those engines on on the aircraft you have to strengthen the wings and they have a bigger diameter as well.

“Once you integrate them onto the aircraft a lot of that efficiency is lost, and the cost goes into the billions. The problem is once you start playing with the structure of the wing and the wingbox, you have to play with the undercarriage and you end up pushing the timeline out too far. ” The success of the Sharklet wingtips on the A320 inspired Airbus to look at how it might redesign the winglets on the A330 to help cut fuel consumption: “We did a lot of work and were getting a point something of a per cent improvement,” Mr Rao said. “This, added to program delays and extra costs didn’t make sense.

“What we decided was that the winglet that we had was probably the most efficient solution we could go forward with. ” And while the increase appears minimal, Airbus is confident it will have great appeal to cus-tomers looking to replace older, long-range widebodies.

“The A330 always had stunning econom-ics but the limitation was always range. Now the 330-300 has the ability to replace the older A340s and 777-200ERs which have stopped production,” he said.

Malaysia Airlines is looking at the aircraft to replace its remaining 777-200ERs used on thinner long-haul services since the 1990s from Kuala Lumpur to Europe and North America. “They chose the 777 back then because it had the range, now they are replacing those with the updated and mod-ern A330-300,” Mr Rao pointed out.

As one of the markets expected to grow strongly in the future, he sees Asia as being a key market for the heavier A330, espe-cially as its new capabilities will allow it to connect markets previously served only by the longer-range 777.

“You have a lot of Chinese carriers that are interested in the aircraft because the 330 can now comfortably cross the Pacific and go into the United States and into the heartland of Europe. Now we can start showing the airlines how they can open up new markets or replace older aircraft with the more fuel-efficient A330. ” In the media release accompanying the launch of the higher-weight option, Airbus said the A330-300 would have a five per cent advantage in terms of direct operating costs against the 787 on short and medi-um-haul routes. The timing has led some to speculate that Airbus may choose to keep the A330 and instead drop the A350-800 from its lineup.

Part of this reflects the growing mo-mentum behind the larger -900 and -1000 models, with Cathay Pacific boosting the latter recently with a hefty order. Airbus has denied this is the plan but with the success of the A330 it seems it still has the option to drop its smallest A350 and prolong the life of the A330.

Meanwhile, Mr Rao emphasised that Airbus was still actively marketing the A330 and had benefited from being able to offer aircraft for delivery as early as 2014, much earlier than the 787 or A350: “Air-lines constantly need to upgrade their fleet and add to their fleet and with 787s and A350s, you’re looking at towards the latter half of the decade,” he said.

“And if they want to do something in 2014-16, it’s not that they don’t have a choice any more – because the A330 hasn’t diminished from the airlines’ point of view. ”