Another start to the working week and another aviation newsweekly to get us underway, I
hope you’re all doing well and have enjoyed your weekend. In today’s video I’ll be
taking a look at the battle for Norwegian and the domestic sector over there, KLM looking
at the early retirement of aircraft and more so stay tuned, I know you all enjoy these.
Wizz Air has announced that it is planning on completely shaking up the Norwegian domestic
market with the launch of three new services. The low-cost unit has been rapidly expanding
during this pandemic, essentially constantly launching new services for customers and is
now setting up its first base in Scandinavia which brings the start of these services in
Norway, all of them originating in Oslo. The 3 services from Oslo will be with the A321
and will rival Norwegian and SAS, one of which is very much on its last legs. The flights
with Wizz begin next month, however, many have called this potentially the end for Norwegian
who have faced problems after problems that have continued and been magnified with this
current global pandemic.
The Boeing 737 MAXs return date has been highly
speculated for some time now with months being flown all over the shop. We’ve had FAA executives
say one thing and then airline executives say the other, however, it all contributes
to the aircraft’s return itself and with another aviation news weekly it’d be wrong
not include an update to its return to service within the United States according to a Ryanair
exeuctive. The FAA and Boeing have been working on certifying the jet now for many months
and that looks to be coming to a close. Thanks to an interview with Irelands Newstalk radio
station the chief executive said The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) finished their test
flights last week and it looks like it's going to go back into service in the US in the next
month or so and we'll take our first deliveries as part of that order. The airline has 200
of the type on order and is also looking at a new sizeable order in the hundreds of the
737 MAX in the future. They expect the first MAX to arrive into their fleet early next
year, being 2021 for anyone watching down the line potentially. Whether this is actually
going to happen is a whole other thing and I’d highly recommend taking dates nowadays
with a grain of salt given what we’ve seen in the past, however, it’s still I believe
worth mentioning to see what various other customers expect around the world.
Over at KLM who as we know recently retired their Boeing 747s talk has surrounded the
early retirement of their Airbus A330s alongside the 747s due to once again the global pandemic.
The airline was originally set to retire the Airbus A330 in 2025, so in some 5 years although
those plans could now be changing as the airline is reported to be in talks with its lessors
over the aircraft. The thing is, the airline doesn’t have exactly an abundant of Airbus
A330s, it has eight of the A330-200s and then just five of the A330-300s but it does still
make a part of its operations that now KLM needs to analyze whether or not are required
to still be around with the gigantic drop off in global pandemic and whether the other
long haul or wide-body aircraft, if you will, can do the same job as their Airbus A330s
moving forward, especially as demand slowly but surely returns back to normal for the
Dutch carrier. In an interview which was seen by a dutch news website the KLM CEO spoke
on the early retirement of the A330 in what has described an internal video, he said the
following You have to imagine that those lease companies have about a hundred airlines who
knock on the door and say, ‘Well, I have some aircraft to return to you.’ That just
doesn’t happen. So we are talking about it, we are looking into it, but going forward
we will be using the Airbuses a bit longer. Highlighting the lengthy process to actually
return these Airbus A330s. KLM is eyeing up in the future an all Boeing wide-body fleet
and removing the A330s now, during a pandemic could give them the most imperfect, yet also
perfect solution to attain that goal that they want, but for now even earlier than they
first imagined.
In some more news surrounding Airbus, they reported their order and delivery results
for the month of September, a month that consisted of no new orders for aircraft but three cancellations.
In more positive news the aircraft manufacturer did deliver a seizable number of aircraft,
that totaled 57 which is massively up from previous months. For example in April Airbus
delivered 14 jets while in August they delivered 39. Still, though the 57 from last month is
down 14 from the 71 from September of 2019. Total yearly deliveries currently stand at
341 aircraft with 282 of those being for the A320 family of aircraft, a very popular option
and one that’s quite easy produce. Despite these 341 deliveries and an improved September,
they are still down around 40% over their numbers for 2019 were at the same stage they
had delivered 571 total aircraft to customers around the world. A sign of how the industry
has been hit during this global pandemic which shows no signs of slowing down, especially
in a sense of aviation.
Airbus continued to deliver a lone Airbus A320 to Middle East Airlines or MEA and this
A320 had the serial number of 10,000 more commonly known as MSN10000. The Chairman and
Director General of MEA commented on taking delivery of the 1000th We are honoured to
receive the state of the art A321neo with its distinctive serial number 10,000 coinciding
with the 75th anniversary of Middle East Airlines and especially after receiving MSN5,000
back in 2012. Since we first acquired an A320 Family aircraft in 2003, we have not only
benefited from the outstanding operational efficiency of the aircraft but were also the
first airline to introduce the wide-body cabin product on a single-aisle aircraft which has
become a trend in the airline industry afterward. To shown the rapid progression in building
aircraft within the Aviation Industry MEA actually welcomed in MSN5000 back in 2012
and this was some 23 years after production first began on the Airbus A320 family, the
5000 we saw just pass now only took 8 years and can show you perfectly how rapid the advancements
in technology have been and in addition the rapid demand changes that while have disappeared
now came with the changing times and growth in the overall population and therefore need
for narrowbodies just like
the A320 family.