Great shot, I was quite surprised at Qantas’ dominance at SIN when I passed through. At one point, there was a row of 5 QF744’s and 1 743 along the pier at Terminal 1. However, it doesn’t take much to work out why. This is the stopover for all flights between Europe and the Middle East and Australia.

Have you ever been to STN for a proper day of spotting? If not, can you back up why it’s so ‘boring’? I’m very sure that you’d spot a lot of things you’ll never get to see at MAN. Fair enough, we don’t have many ‘quality’ carriers, and that is something we truly do lack. But there are a huge amount of different lo-co’s here offering routes right across Europe for prices cheaper than you’ll find anywhere else in the UK. Just think how great that is for someone like me, or anyone else living in the local area. I doubt MAN get many of our rarer movements either. For example the An-124’s we quite regularly see, and the Saudi Arabian Royal flights that pass through frequently.

We’ve nearly caught up now with just one runway, I think that as soon as our new one is built, if not before, we’ll soon overtake in PAX figures atleast. That is unless MAN has a sudden wave of expansion, in which case we may find ourselves in the same position. But with our current rate of expansion being twice that of MAN, it would mean we will overtake somepoint next year. Sorry guys, the lo-co’s are biting back!

I think that is the plan wth the Trent-1000 GZYL. With the -900 they are already having to combat a lot of new ideas that Airbus want. RR have found themselves a bit stuck at the moment though, because unless they find other composites, they’ll have to use more material to make it stronger. More material means more weight, and for every 1kg extra that RR use, they will be charged £10,000 by Airbus.

With the -1000 they are going to need to make it more efficient in the way you mentioned. However, it seems that Boeing this time are expecting too much. They want to have a 20% more efficient engine, which they may be able to achieve if it was designed like that. But, Boeing also want to run all of their electrical power off of the engine aswell, and not have to carry anything such as batteries on board. That way, there is less weight and more room left in the plane to make it live upto it’s expectations.

Yes, more than likely 757. 767 would seem too risky for a new route that has never been tried nefore I would think.