Uh oh. V Australia is now officially not about to order more Boeing 777s, either -300ERs, which it already has in service, or ultra long range -200LRs.
Earlier today even some finger-on-pulse sources in Qantas were of the view that V Australia is poised to acquire enough Boeing 777-200LRs to launch non-stop flights between Sydney and New York City, and Perth and London, in the relatively near future.
The deal appeared to be set for an official announcement as soon as next Wednesday, exquisitely timed to come out just before Qantas CEO Alan Joyce delivers a much anticipated speech about its immediate plans at a National Aviation Press Club luncheon in Sydney.
Well Joyce won’t need to rewrite any parts of his speech.
The only deal that is imminent is for a ‘lot’ of new Boeing 737s, and there are strong reasons to believe these include the largest version the 737-900ER, which is more or less the same in characteristics as the biggest single aisle jet flown by Jetstar, the A321.
And more Embraer E-jets are being discussed by Virgin Blue executives soon, as they fly home via Brazil on a trip that apparently included Toulouse. The idea at Virgin Blue seems to be to ensure that it buys just enough of the E-jets to stop any slots becoming available in the short term for Qantas. The E-jet is the antitdote to flying in Qantaslink Dash-8 turboprops.
But back to the excitement about V Australia getting Boeing 777-200LRs. The Sydney-New York (JFK) route has a minimum or great circle distance of 16,013 kilometres, compared to the current non-stop record holding route between Singapore and Newark of 15,345 kilometres, flown by Airbus A340-500s.
New York is a very important destination for Qantas, which serves it via Los Angeles and it is rumoured to be contemplating extending its trans Pacific A380 services to JFK to protect its strong sales on the route to premium fare paying business travellers.
However Qantas will have no such answer to the other suggested use of V Australia 777-200LRs, which is to offer non-stop flights between Perth and London’s Gatwick airport.
The reality of these ultra long range routes is trip times of around 17.5 hours on the Perth-London non-stops and more than 19 hours westbound out of JFK to Sydney.
Despite the latest incorrect call on its immediate fleet decisions, the big V’s plans are starting to come together. The deal to joint venture the trans Pacific routes with Delta, which does use Boeing 777-200LRs, looks a certainty in terms of gaining final approvals in both Australia and the US.
V Australia’s existing 777-300ER flights to Los Angeles will be expanded to include Phuket, Fiji and Johannesburg next year.
One Comment
RE: Perth to London Direct Flights by V-Australia
Hello Ben,
There’s a web-site that shows routes between city pairs.
http://www.gc.kls2.com
Below is the link for a Perth to Gatwick flight. (IATA Codes : PER – LGW)
http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gc?MAP-STYLE=&MARKER-STYLE=default&PATH=PER-LGW&PATH-COLOR=red&PATH-MINIMUM=&PATH-STYLE=&PATH-UNITS=mi&RANGE=&RANGE-COLOR=navy&RANGE-STYLE=best&SPEED-GROUND=&SPEED-UNITS=kts
The route is substantially over water as landfall would not occur until the Indian sub-continent. It looks like a viable ETOPS 180 route. As the over-water segment is mostly parallel to Summatra and the Malay Penninsula there would be several alternate airfields in case of an engine shutdown.
The large over-water segment could be advantageous as there should be fewer changes of air-space jurisdiction than a SYD – LHR flight that has to transit several SE Asian countries. Maybye there would be fewer rapacious Air Navigation Charges incurred. Who knows.
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