South Korea’s Asiana Airlines orders 6 A380s

January 6, 2011 – 1:48 pm, by Ben Sandilands
   

AsianaAn order for six Airbus A380s by South Korean flag carrier Asiana Airlines today takes the total firm orders for the world’s largest passenger jet to 240.

Asiana will not introduce the A380 until 2014 and says they will fly on premium routes to Europe and the US.

The airline’s larger South Korean rival, Korean Airlines, has 10 A380s on firm order and will put the first of these into service between Seoul and Narita in May before moving the jet to its Los Angeles schedule.

By coincidence Singapore Airlines, the world’s first A380 operator, recently announced that it would launch flights to Los Angeles with the giant Airbus via a city in Asia, with most observers expecting that it would use Seoul as the transit point.

Asiana’s order is sufficient to operate three daily return flights between Seoul and cities such as Los Angeles, London and Paris.  It has not yet chosen between the Rolls-Royce engine option or that offered by the Engine Alliance partnership between GE and Pratt & Whitney.

The flight stages between Seoul and the main European cities or Los Angeles are shorter than the routes between LAX and Australia, and do not need the higher engine thrust settings uniquely required by Qantas A380s to make those flights with a commercially viable payload.

Qantas is expected to announce by the end of this week that it will  resume  its A380s flights to Los Angeles on or about January 17.

Comments (4) | Permalink

4 Comments

  1. 1
    TomTom
    Posted January 8, 2011 at 11:16 am | Permalink

    What’s that doohickey on the fuselage – is Asiana now Northeast Airlines?

  2. 2
    Mark Parker
    Posted January 8, 2011 at 1:53 pm | Permalink

    I’ve been looking at that image all week and wondering why Airbus doesn’t write some form of quality control condition into it’s sales contracts stipulating that customers can’t paint their jets so they look like NSW State Rail carriages…

  3. 3
    nuclear proliferation north korea, nuclear non proliferation | | countries that have nuclear weapons |
    Posted January 10, 2011 at 5:00 pm | Permalink

    ...] It was the Soviet Union which created and trained the North Korean Army.  In 1990 during the period of glasnost, Moscow confirmed that it was Stalin who had personally approved the plan to attack the South, an invasion which began on the night of 24/25 June 1950.  The Korean War, launched with Moscow’s support and covert participation, ended in 1953 leaving the country permanently partitioned.  Ever since then there has been an almost constant propaganda war replete with border incidents and punctuated by occasional acts of war.  Most spectacularly, in 1983, for example, North Korean agents in Burma murdered 17 members of a visiting South Korean delegation, including four Cabinet ministers.  The directives were thought to have come directly Nice related topic here: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2011/01/06/south-koreas-asiana-airlines-orders-6-a380s/ [...

  4. 4
    mrsynik
    Posted January 11, 2011 at 4:38 pm | Permalink

    >What’s that doohickey on the fuselage – is Asiana now Northeast Airlines?

    Asiana Airlines is part of the Kumho Tyres conglomerate. It is their logo. (Incidentally KAL is owned by the Hanjin Shipping Conglomerate) Asiana Airlines are an awesome airline and my favourite carrier. Excellent service even in cattle, every passenger is treated politely by their very attractive attendants. Their lie-flat beds in Business Class gave me my only truly refreshing sleep on an aircraft. I can recommend the Bi-Bim-Bap.

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