The quest for the holy grail

Airbus had just flown its double-decker, 450-seater A380 quadjet, meant as the solution to maximising capacity at congested major hubs from London to Hong Kong to New York – a new Queen of the Skies to usurp the throne of the Boeing 747.

Boeing, meanwhile, was developing its three-variant 250-300 seat 7E7 twinjet, whose carbon fibre-derived fuel efficiency meant it had the range to be a “hub-buster” linking smaller cities point-to-point.

Ten years since the A380 first flew and six since the 787 first got airborne, the airlines have voted with their cheque books. Airbus has booked firm orders for 317 A380s, nearly half of which – 140 – are for one customer, Emirates. To date, 170 of those have been built. Boeing, meanwhile, holds orders for nearly 1,100 787s, with 330 now having rolled off Boeing’s Everett and Charleston production lines.

The A380 is a great aeroplane on the right route – as Emirates at Dubai shows it really is the Queen of large hub flying. But the smaller 787 offers what airlines are valuing more – flexibility.

It is that same flexibility – opening up new routes, replacing larger, older 747s on routes where range rather than capacity was the key requirement, and yet still having really attractive operating economics over shorter to medium-haul routes that allows it to replace older widebody twins – that has seen Airbus’s response to the success of the 787, and the larger 777, the A350 XWB also do so well.

From a late start – the definitive A350 XWB was launched in 2006 – Airbus’s own carbon fibre widebody twin has attracted over 780 orders, well more than twice as many orders as for the A380.

Mostly the 787 and A350 are appearing on existing routes. Air New Zealand has used its 787-9s largely to replace existing 767‑300ER services, for example, while the 787 has allowed United to downgauge from 747s and 777s on its flights to Australia and, soon, to resume services to New Zealand. And Qantas has said its initial 787‑9s, at least, will be used to replace 747‑400s on existing routes (our tip for the inaugural Qantas 787 route is Sydney-San Francisco).

But Boeing’s marketing claims about the 787 allowing new point-topoint routes is also now being borne out, with Jetstar offering perhaps the best example when it started services to the Chinese city of Wuhan from the Gold Coast in late September. Other direct flights pioneered by the 787 locally include Brisbane-Abu Dhabi (Etihad) and Sydney and Melbourne to Delhi (Air India).

And the A350’s first service to Australia will be an all-new route whenQatar links Adelaide to its Doha hub next May.

And for Australasia’s airlines the long-range capabilities of both types also offer the tantalising prospect of the ultimate hub-busting point-to-point flights – direct services to London and New York.

When Qantas announced its 787 order in August it released an indicative range chart that showed New York was just out of reach from the East Coast of Australia. In a subsequent interview with Australian Aviation Qantas CEO Alan Joyce confirmed the 787 didn’t have the range to reach JFK, but he did describe nonstop flights to New York as his airline’s “holy grail”.

Sydney and New York JFK are separated by 8,646nm (using the great circle route), whereas the 787-9 has a brochure range figure of 7,635nm with 290 passengers.

More plausible for now, Joyce has suggested in more than one media interview, is the prospect of nonstop 787 flights from Perth to London.

“The 787-9 has the range to operate such a route,” the Qantas CEO told Air Transport World recently. “This opens up direct services from Australia to Europe for the first time. ” Perth-London is a distance of 7,829nm, so playing around with configurations and loads should put London within reach, if passengers can stomach the idea of a 19 hour trek. Winds and alternates for Perth need to be taken into consideration, but it does seem in the realm of the plausible. But then there are commercial considerations – is the market there? And would passengers from the East Coast be happy hubbing through Perth, where the international and Qantas domestic terminals are on opposite sides of the airport? Singapore Airlines seems to think passengers will stomach a 19 hour flight – it has become the launch customer for an “Ultra Long Range” variant of the A350-900, which will allow it to recommence services on its own holy grail routes of Singapore-Los Angeles and Singapore-New York nonstop.

The A350-900ULR has a book range of 8,700nm – more than enough for Singapore-JFK’s 8,287nm. So how about Sydney-JFK’s 8,646nm? The Ultra Long Range A350 will trade payload for fuel – the A350‑900’s max takeoff weight increases by only five tonnes but fuel capacity increases 24,000 litres, and one report puts the SIA A350-900ULR seat count at just 170, versus SIA’s standard A350‑900 seat count of 300.

So the A350-900ULR’s numbers will likely only really stack up as a niche offering for high yielding business travellers. And it makes much more sense to SIA as an existing A350 customer, than for Qantas, which is not.

For Qantas then, does the ultimate ‘Ultra Long Haul’ machine, in the 777‑8X, offer most promise? The 777-8X too has a book range of 8,700nm, but with a much larger passenger load, thus promising fewer payload tradeoffs to reach that amazing range figure.

But the 777X would also mean a new type in the Qantas fleet, which would make stacking up the business case of Sydney-New York that much harder.

And yet the very fact that Qantas is talking about Perth-London and Sydney-New York nonstops, and that both major airframers now offer ultra long-haul twinjets capable of operating these routes, suggests that these holy grails could be within reach as soon as late this decade.

And what of the other major local airlines? Air New Zealand 787-9s in a lower-density, business orientated configuration than the airline is currently fitting could put Auckland-JFK, at 7,671nm, within viable nonstop reach.

And what about Virgin Australia? Virgin has deferred plans for a new widebody – but in time could a family of A350 variants allow it to replace its 777‑300ERs and A330s? A350-900s could be used on transcontinental and new regional Asian services, and A350‑1000s could replace 777s on LA and Abu Dhabi flights. Then what about some A350-900ULRs for Perth-London (remember VA is about to move into a new terminal at Perth adjacent to the international terminal) and Sydney-New York? Virgin would be busting more than hubs if it was first to market on those two routes.