At the mid-point of its first globe circling tour, at Sydney Airport, Boeing's 777-200LR "Worldliner" had a problem. Despite a slogan reading "Going the Distance," Lars Andersen, the head of the 777 program, admitted there was one notable exception.
"This jet cannot fly Sydney to London non-stop,'" he said. "[It] is easy on paper. This jet can fly non-stop with a full load of up to 301 passengers and 11 tonnes of cargo for 17,446km (Sydney-London is 17,016km). But there is just something about this route (from Australia to London): It gets the most continuous head wind conditions of any. We can't overcome them with a commercially feasible payload, yet flying the other way with a continuous tail wind is no problem at all."
But was Boeing upset? Not for a minute. Despite this one notable exception, Andersen says the plane maker expects to sell a least 400 Worldliners, include a freighter version, over the next 20 years, mainly to Asia-Pacific carriers, including Qantas, the Australian flag carrier. The first of them will enter service for Pakistan International Airlines and EVA Air, based in Taiwan, early next year.
In fact it is considered an all but a done deal by insiders that Qantas is going to include some Worldliners among an order for 40 new Boeings that will be announced as soon as the arm-wrestling over the final price is agreed.
Qantas is just as excited about the Worldliner as it is by the giant Airbus A380 for which it is an early but very annoyed customer because the world's largest airliner is running very late on the production line.
Hub-buster
The airline's chief executive officer, Geoff Dixon, said they wanted a hub buster. Qantas wants to be able to fly non-stop to destinations which, at the moment, can only be reached by stopping off along the way.
However Dixon has been more candid talking to financial analysts than the press.
He has reminded them that Qantas really wants to fly right over the top of Singapore and Dubai in particular, on its flights to London, because they are the hub cities of Singapore Airlines and Emirates which he describes as the enemy because of their claimed unfair access to government subsidies.
Dixon accuses them of unfairly curbing Qantas' access to their home markets while exploiting the traffic rights they gained in cities like Sydney in return for Australian carriers being able to land and refuel en route to Europe.
This is also precisely the argument Singapore Airlines used over a year ago when it introduced the world's longest non-stop routes so far between Singapore and Los Angeles and New York City using the Airbus A340-500 which has about 1000km less range than the new Boeing.
The then CEO of Singapore Airlines, Cheong Choong Kong, said in 2003, "We have become frustrated by the restrictions we experienced getting more access to Japan traffic so this special Airbus enables us to by-pass Tokyo on the way to California or New York."
The only thing Singapore Airlines and other leading Asia-Pacific carriers including Qantas appear to agree on is that the complex web of air traffic agreements that apply to the region is best avoided by using jets that fly over the restrictions at 13,000m.
Dixon said: "It is much easier to have a traffic treaty about flights between two countries, than between and beyond two countries."
Currently Qantas is studying whether a one-way non-stop arrangement from London to Sydney but a refueling stop, perhaps even in Russia the other way, will be acceptable to its top corporate customers, who generate most of its premium fare revenues. Another option is to fly to London via New York City and then return non-stop to Sydney on the most direct and fastest tail-wind-assisted route across Siberia and China.
But the number crunchers at Qantas have yet to decide if that is worth it, or whether they should just stick to using the jet to better access America.
The transport analyst with Tourism Australia, Karl Flowers, says the ability to offer non-stop flights to the middle and eastern US could tap a vast holiday market that currently regards the journey between the two continents as being too arduous because of the multiple connections involved.
Time savings
Flowers says the success Sydney has already had in attracting hundreds of US companies to the harbor city as their base for Asia-Pacific branch offices would be accelerated by offering frequent non-stop flights that will take only 18 hours, or up to 90 minutes less than it does to fly from New York to Singapore.
Time saving aside, is up to 19 hours 30 minutes in a jet humanly possible? Not surprisingly both Airbus and Boeing claim it is. In the Airbus A340-500 which is being deposed by the Worldliner in the range stakes, Singapore Airlines has the most spacious economy class seats of all, as well as sleeper suites in business class.
The A340-500 is even fitted with a single occupancy "morgue" so that in the event of a passenger dying in their seat, they can be discretely removed for the remainder of the flight.
Boeing is not saying if it will offer the morgue option but claims it will have even roomier seats in all classes from economy to first.
It has even put the crew rest bunks in a hidden compartment in the ceiling so that airlines keep more of their seats for sale rather than occupied by a double complement of pilots and relief shifts of cabin attendants.
The Worldliners are also designed for wireless broadband satellite Internet access, another way to deal with boredom, or to keep in touch with head office.
And while Airbus devised a "morgue for one" to avoid one source of unplanned landings, Boeing has applied itself to the toilets. They have been specially designed and tested to withstand the challenges of working perfectly for however long it takes.
FORCED LABOR: A US court listed three Taiwanese and nine firms based in Taiwan in its indictment, with eight of the companies registered at the same address Nine companies registered in Taiwan, as well as three Taiwanese, on Tuesday were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) as a result of a US federal court indictment. The indictment unsealed at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, said that Chen Zhi (陳志), a dual Cambodian-British national, is being indicted for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding Group’s forced-labor scam camps in Cambodia. At its peak, the company allegedly made US$30 million per day, court documents showed. The US government has seized Chen’s noncustodial wallet, which contains
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of
SENATE RECOMMENDATION: The National Defense Authorization Act encourages the US secretary of defense to invite Taiwan’s navy to participate in the exercises in Hawaii The US Senate on Thursday last week passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2026, which strongly encourages the US secretary of defense to invite Taiwan’s naval forces to participate in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise, as well as allocating military aid of US$1 billion for Taiwan. The bill, which authorizes appropriations for the military activities of the US Department of Defense, military construction and other purposes, passed with 77 votes in support and 20 against. While the NDAA authorizes about US$925 billion of defense spending, the Central News Agency yesterday reported that an aide of US
NINE-IN-ONE ELECTIONS: Prosecutors’ offices recorded 115 cases of alleged foreign interference in the presidential election campaign from August 2023 to Dec. 13 last year The National Security Bureau (NSB) yesterday said that it has begun planning early to counter Chinese interference in next year’s nine-in-one elections as its intelligence shows that Beijing might intensify its tactics, while warning of continued efforts to infiltrate the government and military. The bureau submitted a report to the Legislative Yuan ahead of a meeting today of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. “We will research situations in different localities and keep track of abnormalities to ensure that next year’s elections proceed without disruption,” the bureau said. Although the project is generally launched during election years, reports of alleged Chinese interference
RSS