The second day consisted of a handful of orders.
Farnborough Airshow 2024 (Photo: AirlineGeeks | William Derrickson)
As the drizzle begins to come down this morning, the airshow opens for day two. After a day filled with orders on Monday, there’s only more to come as we kick off the day with a tour of Virgin Atlantic’s Airbus A330neo on static display, as well as a press conference on board with the CEO of the airline, as well as the CEO at Airbus Commercial.
Virgin Atlantic CEO, Shai Weiss, announced on board the airline’s static A330neo this morning that his company would be purchasing an additional seven Airbus A330neos. This comes as a part of the London-based carrier’s fleet transformation, which he claimed it had spent 17 Billion pounds on over the last decade. Mr. Weiss confirmed that these A330neos would replace the existing A330-300 and A330-200 fleet.
This move should bring their total fleet number to 45 by the first quarter of 2028, with the old fleet including the A330ceos standing at 44 aircraft. AirlineGeeks asked Mr. Weiss whether he would keep the current cabin configuration on board the new aircraft, of which he said that he could not reveal anything at this time, but that he “highly appreciated” the current A330neo cabin.
Mr. Weiss claimed that the airline would position 40 of its fleet at London Heathrow, with the remaining five being at the carrier’s Manchester hub.
Commenting on the recent situation resulting in the cancellation of Virgin Atlantic’s route to Shanghai, Mr. Weiss blamed airspace issues. He stated that Chinese competitors could fly over Russian airspace, while Virgin Atlantic couldn’t so they had to take a longer route resulting in higher fuel consumption. However, Mr. Weiss said that he would “love to serve Seoul” once the Asiana and Korean Air merger was complete, due to free landing slots. From there, the airline can serve a 5th freedom route to the surrounding areas such as Japan or the Philippines.
Airbus today finalized an order with Japan Airlines to bring new long and short-haul aircraft to the fleet. The order consists of 20 Airbus A350-900s, and a further 11 Airbus A321neos. The order was announced in March of this year, however, was finalized at the airshow on Tuesday. Japan Airlines VP of Procurement, Yukio Nakagawa, claimed that it was “an honor” to make such an announcement.
The order includes one less A350 than announced in March. According to Mr. Nakagawa, this is because the extra A350 was a replacement for the one that crashed in January, however, Japan Airlines has decided not to continue with the aircraft.
As for the A321neos, JAL currently has no plans to convert them into the latest model, the Airbus A321XLR.
At the airshow over the past two days, there has been a strong focus on East Asian carriers, with both JAL and Korean making huge orders to add to their fleet. When asked about the impact of Chinese manufacturer Comac, Mr. Scherer said that it had no effect on the orders of Airbus aircraft and that he viewed them as “a friendly competitor,” but not a threat.
Qatar Airways and Boeing have announced that it will extend its order for 40 Boeing 777-9s by 20, bringing the total figure for the order to 60 of the aircraft type. This means that Qatar Airways in total has 94 Boeing 777X aircraft on order, including both cargo and commercial configurations.
Stephanie Pope, CEO of Boeing commercial airplanes, said that the airline is “a leader in our industry, and we are honored the airline added 20 more 777-9 jets to its large Boeing order book. We appreciate their confidence that Boeing’s market-leading widebody family will provide outstanding fuel efficiency and a superior passenger experience for its global operations.”
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