Air Austral to launch A380…800 seater

Airbus remains confident French carrier Air Austral will proceed with its plans for an 800-seat A380. It says the new plane could cut fares to Europe by 30 per cent.

Air Austral announced in January that it planned to connect Sydney to Paris through a small island off Africa, using the world’s first single-class A380, capable of carrying up to 840 people.

Boeing 777 flights from Australia will connect with the A380s at the island of Reunion, off the east coast of Africa.

The European manufacturer’s superjumbo product marketing director, Richard Carcaillet, said during a visit to Sydney this week that the all-economy A380 was a solid commitment and he was confident a purchase agreement would be signed by the end of the year.

He expected the confirmation would make the market, which may have initially ignored Air Austral’s announcement, take more notice.

“When it is confirmed as a PA there will be more communication about it and people will realise that that’s another use for the A380 — it’s not just a new flagship for key airlines it’s also a bloody unbeatable seat-mile cost machine,” Mr Carcaillet said.

The A380 was also environmentally sound: “you’re looking at an aircraft that offers you 1.9 litres per 100km per seat fuel consumption”.

The airline had been saying it had been looking at various scenarios for this aircraft on this route, but “it can lower airfares by 30 per cent”.

“If it does that, the market will react.”

After a delay of almost two years, Airbus has 17 A380s flying and another 10 will be delivered by the end of the year.

Air France will shortly join Singapore Airlines, Emirates and Qantas as the plane’s first European operator when it launches services between Paris and New York in November. German carrier Lufthansa is also poised to join the superjumbo club.

Qantas is due to take its fourth superjumbo shortly and will use it to increase frequencies on its existing routes to the US.

More importantly, the fourth Qantas A380, designated MSN26, is the first to emerge from the so-called Wave Two production process — the automated industrial system that will be used to produce A380s from now on.

The Wave One aircraft, which include the three already flying in Australia, had to be rewired by hand because of a software bungle that caused the embarrassing and costly delay in deliveries that is still affecting the planemaker.

Qantas refused to take the aircraft at its original scheduled delivery date because it did not consider it to be ready. Mr Carcaillet said this was not because of technical issues.

“There may have been detailed discussions about some things in the cabin, but that’s part and parcel of what happens to one or the other aircraft,” he said, adding that deferred delivery was considered a slippage rather than a delay.

Mr Carcaillet said the industrial process was not yet quite out of the woods and additional labour had been required to complete the Qantas plane.

“That’s part of this adaptation. But all the aircraft, within I would say certainly next year, will be out of that as well, and at a completely nominal industrial process on each of the aircraft,” he said.

The European planemaker will deliver just less than one aircraft per month this year, but it has verified the process to ensure it can move up to two a month at final assembly.

Mr Carcaillet said an estimate by Airbus chief executive Tom Enders that the company would be aiming for at least 20 aircraft next year still applied.

Airlines that have introduced the A380 are happy with the start of service and the manufacturer says all agree with a recent observation by Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce that the superjumbo was attracting yield and load premiums.

Newly added destinations include Seoul, Hong Kong and Paris.

“What Singapore Airlines did in Paris was to replace a 10 times-a-week 777-300ER service with a daily A380 service,” Mr Carcaillet said.

“Now if you look at that in terms of capacity, you increase capacity by 20 per cent in going to the A380, but that is almost exclusively economy class capacity.

“That capacity basically comes for free, because flying seven times an A380 or 10 times a 777-300ER, the total cost of operation over a week or a month is essentially the same.”

Airbus’s analysis, based on International Air Transport Association figures and internet fares, indicates all routes are showing yield premiums in premium classes, and some in all three classes.

Nonetheless, the economic downturn has caused some carriers, including Qantas, to look at deferring orders for the big plane.

Mr Carcaillet was reluctant to talk about specifics but said deferrals had been “fairly moderate”.

Airlines were still keen to start A380 operations but some, as had been reported, wanted to spread out deliveries because of short-term cash requirements, he said.

Meanwhile, Airbus continues to tout the A380 as the most environmentally friendly aircraft in operation and Mr Carcaillet expects it to remain so, particularly if there is more interest in high-density aircraft.

Airlines other than Air Austral were starting to ask questions, he said, and this was an up-and-coming segment for the superjumbo.

“If you look at basic versions of the A350 or the 787, the A380 is more efficient in terms of fuel per seats,” he said.

“If you looked at various potential stretch versions of all these new, super-efficient twins, you’d be looking at the stretch of the A380 one day compared to that.”

But the stretch version is not likely to come soon.

“I can tell you now, with the crisis, it’s not the moment that airlines will be talking about a bigger A380,” he said.

Source:The Australian