Virgin negotiating up to 50 A350 planes

(Havent seen this on here yet, though feel free to delete it mods)

Virgin Atlantic are looking order further aircraft from Airbus, in the form of the A350. They are looking at ordering up to 50.
Source:

LINK to Reuters piece

Link to an original piece in German from aero.de

[url=http://tinyurl.com/lxdm4a] LINK above translated in Google


Interesting times.

Kev.

{Edited by Bazz: tidied the first two links but can't seem to do the third?}

{Sorted. (URL was confusing so made it a tinyurl) }

Does this add any weight to VS potentially cancelling the Dreamliner order give yet more delays? Stick it out with the current fleet plus 10 A333's until 2014?

It has been speculated the whole loss of both the A380 and B787, but of course is unfounded as yet. Many have calculated that without any cancelling in orders Virgins fleet will hit 84 planes!!!

New planes are well needed on the fleet as well as updates for the fleet. The worry is a whole airbus fleet for VS with no boeing would be a huge loss.

See what the future holds

Alex

Why would it be a huge loss? Other than to the American ecomomy. LCC's tend to operate one manufacturer fleets to minimise servicing costs. Why would VS not benefit from this strategy also?

quote:Originally posted by platinumleo
The worry is a whole airbus fleet for VS with no boeing would be a huge loss.

It certainly wouldn't worry me ...

Perhaps negotiation is the key word here.

Manufacturers are having it tough - Airlines are going to be looking for bargains, especially those who have recently reported profits.

[mitchja]

My only concern is where are VS going to get slots from to fly all these extra A/C [:?]

Regards

quote:Originally posted by mitchja
My only concern is where are VS going to get slots from to fly all these extra A/C [:?]

Regards


From all these major airlines that SRB is forecasting to go bust [}:)]

I would miss being on a 744 - there's something very elegant about it but I couldn't care less if I was on any other airbus or boeing. I suppose I would prefer airbus as they are European....[:w]

Airbus offers the advantage of offering similarity between all their fleets which reduce costs, Maintenance and crew. Therefore if Virgin wanted to become more streamlined and have roe flexibility with fleet allocations the could go for an all A350 + A380 fleet in the future but doing so reduce the potential to negotiate. But then saying that Virgins fleet will all need up dating over the next decade so theyd be pretty much set for the next 25 years, so maybe negotiating power wont matter that much. I agree though I think it would be a shame to have no Boeings in the fleet. I think if the 787 had a larger variant to potentially replace the 340-600 then the 787 and 350 will be pretty much on par with each other. And with the huge discounts Boeing SHOULD be offering then Virgin could get a great deal. The original plan I seem to remember was 787,340,380. Things seem to have changed. I wonder why???

[Scrooge]

Because someone at long last woke up and realised that there are twin engine aircraft out there that can do the job as well, for less than the 4 engine aircraft VS currently has.

Now that I have had time to think about it some more, I think whoever raised the Manchester hub idea may be on to something, 10 aircraft is about the right number to run a nice little mini hub (330) with a 346/350 coming in to do the MCO run.

Bad news for Boeing

Qantas cancel 15 787's

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8120276.stm

[Scrooge]

At this point in time I would say that Boeing has no issues with a cancelations, it gives them some much needed breathing room in their delivery schedule.

quote:Originally posted by Scrooge
At this point in time I would say that Boeing has no issues with a cancelations, it gives them some much needed breathing room in their delivery schedule.


Scrooge

As a mere member of Joe public and having no business accumen. Boeing would have no issue with further cancellations? I might add that S7 from Russia also cancelled an order for 15 787's in January. Am I missing something? Would cancellations not affect things such as company cashflow, possible share price fall, employment relations (10,000 job cuts at Boeing this year) and market confidence? If I was the chief executive at Boeing I would be a VERY WORRIED man!!

quote:Originally posted by sixdownkeepsafedepth
As a mere member of Joe public and having no business accumen. Boeing would have no issue with further cancellations? I might add that S7 from Russia also cancelled an order for 15 787's in January. Am I missing something? Would cancellations not affect things such as company cashflow, possible share price fall, employment relations (10,000 job cuts at Boeing this year) and market confidence? If I was the chief executive at Boeing I would be a VERY WORRIED man!!


THink of it like this, Boeing has a backlog of 850+ orders for a plane that is likely at least 2 1/2 years late. The order book was around 900 planes. Early customers are pressing for their plans and so these cancellations help Boeing regain some ground with their other customers. For Boeing, they will get other orders down the line and the order book will grow further after successful first flight. They have about ten years of full production before the cancellations will kick in.

So yes, they'll be concerned, but it does help them in at least one way.

[Scrooge]

The offer thing is, for each delay Boeing has to pay compensation, the 15 cancelations give Boeing some room where the delivery schedule will not be affected.

A couple of thoughts, these were 789's that were cancelled, strange to me that they would cancel the larger plane.
That said, expect more cancellations from QF, they have over 100 wide bodies on order and frankly they don't need that many.
Also there is talk of the T7 getting a new wing AND the Y3 (T7) replacement is in the very early design stages.

With the 330's and 789's coming VS may be wise to skip the 350 and get on board early for this.