http://www.flightglobal.com/news/art...-a330s-379045/

Long way off, buy discussions are happening

I have mentioned before in previous threads that we are indeed looking at the 787-10X but whats swirling around at the moment internally is that we will use the 787-10X to replace the 773 on regional runs while the A330's will be replaced with incoming new A330's and the upcoming A359.

Cheers

They're looking to retire A330s, while ordering more A330s at the same time. Why..

Cathay in my opinion is probably the worst major airline in terms of fleet planning.

The 747 should have been retired a year ago- all of them,and the number of aircraft ordered is barely enough to replace what they are going to retire

Newer A330 are much better aircraft, and way more efficient than the older A330. Despite it being the same model of aircraft, the technology has improved on later deliveries.

A few years ago, the plan was to retire the entire 744 fleet within 3 years. But when we had a strong 2010, all plans were postponed because of expansion and increase seats and frequency of flights. Summer 2013 will see a dramatic shift of longhauls converting from the 744 to 77W. LHR - 3 out of 4 flights will be 77W while the 4th will remain 744. FRA becomes 77W as well. SFO still holds on with a daily 744.

That leaves JNB as the only longhaul destination. I would not be surprised if it goes daily 77W or A343 at some point.

So with a handful of 744's, those will pretty much go mostly to regional destinations since regional flights are not as fuel thirsty as longhaul ones.

The bright side is on a regional run, you get a better shot of a longhaul product!

Cheers

+1

Especially when there is a outstanding order of 26 77Ws.

Beside 787-8/9 experiences back orders anyway. Unless Boeing can do some catch-up, 787-10 is mostly a talk.

To be fair a few things caused them to panic and in retrospect, caused them to make bad decisions.

1) SARS - things were going great until this happened. Complete panic mode.

2) When Cross-strait happened between Taiwan and China we saw CX, incorrectly, predicted that Taipei/Hong Kong traffic will drop significantly. So in another panic, they postponed their schedule delivery of 773ERs.

3) 2010 boom

I'm sure there are other factors but at the time those decisions made sense, just that well, CX sort of missed the gravy train when things rebounded. Those 747s are significantly cutting into their profits that they wish could be provided by more fuel efficient 773ERs

yup that's my point only 21 77W, they have 29 now

21 to replace 18 747, keeping in mind that 747 has a much greater capacity , this order only makes sense if cathay wants to reduce its size and market share and not grow uptill 2015.

By the time the a350 come they will just be to replace a340 and old a330, so there will not be much fleet growth post 2015 either!!

How does it cut profits though? They've been flying the 744 for like, almost 20 years before the 777s started arriving. Cathay have been paying for the 747's fuel bills for like a decade or so, I doubt they have been loosing money all along. It's true they save money by operating 77Ws which doesn't consume that much fuel, but I'd expect them to only be able to save $$, instead of going to the extent in which they loose money by flying 747s.

Maybe a check to the jet fuel price history in the past decade will give you some hints

You're seriously asking this?

1) Fuel prices skyrocket during the 20 years, not to mention the few peaked periods that CX has said caused them to run 747 at a loss.

2) The older they are, the more costly it is to maintain them...

A full 747 is a very profitable bird.
The problem is using 747 on markets that do not justify them. In 2010 the 747s were packed to Europe. Today, competition from ME airlines (although HK managed to keep EY out of HKIA) and the European crisis mean that the 747s are not that profitable on many routes where they cannot be filled.
And as Cathay Boy mentions, they are old birds, so a little bit more expensive to maintain. But on an old bird, most of the parts have been replaced, sometimes many times, so the argument should not be overemphasized.

Quote from CX World in May:

�If the world was up and fuel prices down, we could keep the older aircraft for longer.�

�Now, with the market softening and oil prices way up, routes operated by the 747s are really struggling to make cash, especially the long-haul routes to North America and Europe where fuel is such a big part of the overall cost
and the impact of high fuel prices is more severe.�

I'm biased so when I see the 787-10X I was like "god I hate stretch variants it must be as loveless as the 773". And then I scrolled down and saw your comment.

Would I be partially right in suggesting that, perhaps someone at CX looked at cargo capacity on the 748/388 and, not seeing anything they like, decided those planes won't compute profit-wise, but the 773ER will?