Originally Posted by
GTR56
It seems a strange plan that given the range of the 787-10 can fly to over 90% of BAs destinations to limit it to shorter long haul routes when no one really knows what the market will be like in 5-10 years with an aircraft that should fly 25-30 years.
Its quite a flexible aircraft and yet it will be severely limited in this configuration.
The issue is that the 787-10 has a large cargo capacity and if fully loaded, then the range of the aircraft becomes restricted. The crew rest will add additional weight potentially further limiting the aircraft. As I understand it, the crew rest makes the aircraft uneconomical to run and the key routes that BA intends to use it on. It's been mentioned that most carriers opting for the 787-10 are opting not to include the cabin crew rest area.
My guess is that we will see BA use a mix of the 77W and the A350 on routes that need cabin crew rest areas. Also, there at some stage BA will need to place an order to replace the remaining 747s and some of the earlier 772s and who knows what we will see at that stage.