Dreamliners rolling off production line at steady rate this year

PacoMartin, I love your aviation threads. Have you ever said on this forum what type of work you do?

If I had to guess I would say an analyst for Airbuss or a large aviation financing company.

The Oct 12 press release was on the Qantas "intent" to do London to Perth non stop in Dreamliners by 2017. No zig zag around
Russian/Chechnian missles.

Qantas used word turnaround and praised its top guy for massive profits but I don't know if analysts joined the bandwagon or not or what effect selling its lease at Brisbane Airport played.

Quote: Fleastiff

Qantas used word turnaround and praised its top guy for massive profits but I don't know if analysts joined the bandwagon or not or what effect selling its lease at Brisbane Airport played.

Virgin Australia has a 110 planes to Qantas 131 (but Qantas has far more widebodies), but VA's aggressive growth has hurt Qantas's bottom line. I know that everyone praises the corporate decisions and hands out big bonuses, but bottom line Qantas is a long haul airlines, and as such they benefit even more than normal from lower fuel costs.

Qantas added an additional order of 8 A380's in 2006 to it's initial order of 12 in 2000 (part of the group that got the project off the ground). They still have not scheduled a delivery of those 8 A380's and I doubt that they fit into their current vision. The decision to fly their current A380's through Dubai probably makes sense from a logistics point of view, but the flights look very similar to Emirate's flights.

Perhaps I am being too negative about their ability to fly over the Ukraine. I guess they could set up connections from all major Australian hubs to Perth and then fly to London several times a day. I am sure that some people prefer domestic connections. But I still want to retain some skepticism. It's a lot of investment to set up an operation like that, because the missiles won't go away. It might not be a Qantas plane that gets shot down, but if any plane is downed the insurance brokers will be all over Qantas. Airline executives are traditionally very risk aversive to even low potential of such a tragedy.

While the 787-9 can make the distance from Perth to London, it is generally believed that in 5 years there will be a choice of planes that can fly straight from the larger urban areas in Australia to London.

NY Times article reveals an emphasis on production rather than quality at South Carolina plant where FOD problems are pervasive.