Goldorak

No precedent as the A388, which was also used on some LHR runs at the beginning, had no W when they were put in service.
I am guessing that either W will remain empty, or they will give those seats to those who are booked in EcoFlex.

KLflyerRalph

No info yet on the special welcome flights?

Goldorak

As it was said above, the 1st B789 just delivered will fly an almost daily rotation to LHR. La Tribune is reporting this morning that the 2nd one to be delivered in April could make a daily rotation to LYS between the arrival from- and the departure to YUL.
http://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-...gv-622146.html

brunos

It is good to see that AF has finally decided to use some of its longhaul ac more efficiently by adding some short runs between longhaul runs.

NickB

IMO, you are reading too much in this. You assume that this is a permanent pattern. It looks to me more like familiarisation (for the crew) and PR (for customers) flights, like they, and other airlines, did for the A380. I do not think that the traffic between LHR and CDG warrants a daily 787 rotation in the morning (or any other time of day, for that matter).

irishguy28

Isn't it also true that most airlines will avoid using their longhaul aircraft in this high-cycle manner? Takeoffs/landings and the consequent pressurisation/depressurisation takes its toll on aircraft.

Aircraft lifespan is usually measured in the number of (takeoff and landing) cycles. A shorthaul aircraft will therefore rack up cycles much faster than a longhaul aircraft. Except in some cases where there is massive demand on short routes - mostly in Asia - it rarely makes sense to put your biggest, most expensive aircraft on such a regime which prematurely "ages" it.

Goldorak

You are correct in theory, but it is now very common to see airlines introducing their new plane type in their fleet by having some short-haul flights done for crew familiarization/training. I think this trend became very visible with the A380 introduction. And this period is not lasting more than a couple of weeks/months.

It is clearly for familiarisation. But also a way to increase the use of the aircraft while they just have one or 2. Once they have more frames, they don't need that anymore, as the number of destinations served is increasing and so one particular plane is not spending too much time on the ground at CDG.

LY777

And yet, it works perfectly well in Asia!
I guess it is high time for AF to use their widebodies between 2 long haul flights!

delanotre

Already posted by Leadership...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-f...g-787-9-a.html

Benjh

Any more news on which routes will be flown with the 787? Still on Cairo?

Goldorak

just read this thread. Update on posts #29 and 33.

Benjh

My bad! I thought I was all the way down the page but turns out it was only just an ad...

brunos

I get your point and we had that discussion before. If no destination has sufficient traffic, then it is clearly suboptimal. And I understand that European airlines prefer to maximize frequency given the low traffic.
I also get the point by irishguy28 about lifespan. Again we have had that discussion before. However, I think that there has been a lot of improvements on landing gears and the argument is a bit less valid than it used to be. Asia sees a massive use of widebodies on regional routes (even from non-legacy airlines). Priority is given to regional widebodies with reinforced landing gears, but longhaul ac are still extensively used. But as NickB will quickly point out, the market is quite different with longer routes and huge traffic.

That does not mean that there is strictly no case for using an underutilized "small" widebody (A330, B787) on European routes. BA is doing it when demand justifies it (AF does it rarely). A big block, especially at AF, is staffing of those flights.
Long ago, Air Inter (the domestic arm of AF) was heavily relying heavily on widebodies (A300, A310, A330, even 747). I remember AOM periodically using longhaul ac to NCE.
Not so long ago AF considered having widebodies on its navette. But deemed it too complicated. It would be even more complicated to use a longhaul ac on a route (say NCE) typically used by A320s. But the argument of full utilization of longhaul ac is that it will reduce the need to buy A320s, Hence the cost comparison should include a portion of the savings on a purchase of additional/replacement ac.

San Gottardo

Another couple of reasons that speak against the use of widebodies more extensively in Europe:

• Longer turnaround times, when suddenly the time between spent on the ground vs. time in the air skews heavily towards the ground
• Gate and ramp space. In many European airports there is no space for widebodies at the Schengen terminals, and/or blocking two gates isn't an option, and/or ramp space is too tight. Boarding an A380 is doable, but not optimal
• European airlines don't have longhaul planes configured for the kind of market conditions here, i.e all their planes are configured for longhaul operations with longhaul business and often First cabins. Spending lots of "cabin real estate" on only a few seats when what you need is a much denser configuration simply doesn't make sense. Spending money on depreciating all that equipment, IFE, etc. only to fly from Nantes to Orly is pointless.
• Stage lengths in Europe tend to be shorter and there is no or only little time zone difference, so it is easier to offer higher frequencies.

Obviously European airlines do use their longhaul planes on short routes. Just this week I have seen a Swiss Boeing 777-300ER fly from Zurich to - believe it or not - Hanover! And this was not a training flight, the 77W is now firmly integrated into the longhaul network (training flights happened last year to BCN, GVA, FRA).

Is it impossible for European airlines to operate widebodies inside Europe? Absolutely not. Re-configure some planes, possibly re-design the timetables, make sure you have space at airports, come up with an efficient way to turn the planes around on the ground, and this could work. BA has shown this with their 767 ops to other European cities (ARN, FRA, ATH, CDG, etc) for many years. But using the existing widebody fleets which are configures for longhaul? Rather not.

BTW, Air Inter and the 747: they indeed operated some, on loan from Air France, but apparently never painted in IT colours. They did have quite a fleet of Airbus A330s though, which I believe was the largest plane ever operating on their AOC (Secretely hoping that the usual suspects will jump on this occasion to start the traditional French aviation history off-topic, where the good ole days of rubbish Air Inter, the charm of Orly with Jean Gabin walking through the halls and the first Concorde flights will be brought up )

bodory

Ah, the good days of AF747 and 777 to NCE, AJA and BIA.

Air Liberté used its DC10 to Djerba too.