Hudson dismissed criticism that Qantas was too slow buying the new planes, saying the airline was among the first to make the purchases, despite COVID locking down production and travel. “Many people said at the time to me: how can you be ordering so many planes in view of COVID?”
Hudson said the decision to push ahead despite the uncertainty – and to choose Airbus – “was the right one for us”.
Qantas selected the 321XLR (standing for “extra-long range) to give the airline more flexibility in servicing future routes. The XLRs can be deployed domestically along with the A220s, Hudson said, and will increase Qantas’ destinations in South-East Asia. They may also fly from Perth to India.
The XLR does this with the help of a specially designed rear centre tank, giving the plane a range of some 8700 kilometres. Because the tank – containing almost 13,000 litres of fuel – adds weight at take-off, the XLR is engineered to gain more lift at the crucial moment. The larger the volume of fuel the more efficiently it burns, extending the aircraft’s range.
The XLRs will feature only business class and economy seats, reflecting their initial domestic role, Hudson told this masthead. But they could eventually be configured with the premium economy seats that are so popular on international flights, she said. That assessment “is still to be worked through”.
Aviation analyst Peter Harbison said the XLR was “a network planner’s dream aircraft” because they have a very low unit cost of operating short and long-haul flights.
The range capability “makes it a real game-changer”, he said.
In a “very different context”, the XLR could be compared to past roll-outs of pivotal aircraft such as the Boeing 747, which opened up long-haul flight to the masses. The difference is that the XLR allows airlines to develop new international destinations while circumventing crowded routes at existing hubs.
Still, uncertainty about the pace of the rollout remains. The first seven planes will replace domestic 737s. Airbus anticipates the XLR production rate will accelerate as the fabrication process becomes more familiar and streamlined, as is the trend with all aircraft production.
The XLR is already in service with some European carriers. Ireland’s Aer Lingus has used it to expand its destinations, which “has made a dramatic difference … on its North Atlantic services”, said Cathal Guiomard, assistant professor in aviation management at Dublin City University.
For most of the last half-century, Guiomard told this masthead, the Irish carrier flew from Dublin to three US destinations: New York, Chicago and Boston. But thanks to the XLR, “it’s now economic for Aer Lingus to fly to places where the use of a larger aircraft would have made the service uneconomic”.
“I’d be quite optimistic that in the Australian case … it might prove to be a very significant change.”
Peter Forsyth, professor of economics at Monash University, noted that some of the A330s Qantas uses in Asia are 20 years old and that the “new Airbuses might be very good in terms of cost-efficiency”.
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The new XLRs come with more expensive upfront costs, but the promise of lower-cost flying in future.
However, Forsyth believes replacing A330s around Asia won’t change “things very substantially in terms of routes that they could fly”.
He believes the bigger boost for Qantas will come from the purpose-built Airbus A350-1000 ULR commissioned for Project Sunrise.
Chris Zappone’s travel to Hamburg was sponsored by Airbus and Qantas.
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