A350 Deliveries and Routes

[SQ228]

Just received email notification of seat change on SQ328 for 8th July. Looks like a change of metal to A350.

I'm on SQ327 a week after that. I better check, although I still haven't been emailed about the change to A350 for SQ208 and that happened well over a month ago.

[SQ228]

Just received email notification of seat change on SQ328 for 8th July. Looks like a change of metal to A350.

Confirmed: Munich is the next A350 destination. My guess on timing is going to be around 03JUL after the A350 comes off SQ217/8 and it reverts to A380, but if SMO is scheduled to be delivered before that, the addition of SMN and SMO would be enough to cover MUC.

[zilchster]

Just did a dummy booking on SQ 328/327. It is indeed showing the A350-900.

[SilverKrisSRG]

I've flown SQ207 many times. You get the full breakfast as your first meal with the usual Western or Asian option and then before landing a light lunch which is usually just the hot dish and nothing else plus tea or coffee. By dinner time in Melbourne you will be pretty hungry!

the best trick is to order BTC so we can get full meal instead of light lunch

[SQ228]

the best trick is to order BTC so we can get full meal instead of light lunch

Some of us fly Y...

[SQ228]

Just did a dummy booking on SQ 328/327. It is indeed showing the A350-900.

There had been a rumour that MAN/IAH might swap with MUC and the 77W would head to MAN instead. At this point that does not appear to be happening as in both July and August SQ52/1 is still showing as A350.

Seems that CPH has scored the honour of the 77W with it's F cabin. Who'd have predicted that...

[Bitterroot]

Just did a dummy booking on SQ 328/327. It is indeed showing the A350-900.

328/327 to A359 Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday effective July 1st. Monday, Wednesday, Friday stay 77WR. Stays this way through summer 2017 timetable and winter 2017/2018.

[zilchster]

And Mumbai has been announced as the next 350 destination. SQ 422 and 421.

http://www.routesonline.com/news/38/...rom-july-2017/

[SQ228]

And Mumbai has been announced as the next 350 destination. SQ 422 and 421.

http://www.routesonline.com/news/38/...rom-july-2017/

As I predicted 6 days ago...

[Metropolitan Airlines]

Could be that there's one down and on weekends there's not much room to move with finding a spare. Alternatively, maybe for today's flight they had too many passengers in total or too many F cabin bookings that were made prior to the decision to downgauge. I really don't know why they didn't change this flight to a 77WR given how many are now available and give SQ241/2 an A350. Let SYD share our pain with their 5 daily flights of which 2 are A380...

To be honest I think SYD should be served with 3x A380 daily and MEL should be served with 2x A380 daily instead. Australian routes are doing very strong whilst European routes are doing poorly so why don't deploy A350/B77WR to Paris, Zurich etc to increase frequency whilst move A380s to Australia so that Australians can enjoy all day every day low fares to Hong Kong and Europe via Singapore?

I seriously think it is ridicious to deploy A350 onto SQ217/218 and now we can't even book Economy Class on those flights in June because they are full.

[loldude333]

I'm just speculating, so don't mind if i'm wrong/you think i'm wrong:

Australia is probably where most of SQ's business comes from at the moment. Perhaps their thinking is that the persistent A350 is to expose more travellers to the new products and plane so they'll come wanting more in the longer term. After all, the A380s have the older products for now.


Regarding increasing frequency to European cities, i think CDG is rather busy (not sure about ZRH but probably less so), so perhaps increasing frequency is not possible/economically viable?

Then again, perhaps Aussie demand is already there, so the logic could be turned on its head and asked this way: why not send the newest and best to Europe (which to be fair is already being done with many routes) to drum up demand while lapping up all the extra demand on the Australian routes? Could it be that they particularly want more premium cabin travel from Australia? Seeing as Y is booming.

Just some musings. Hope they contribute to the discussion in a useful way.

[SQ228]

I think all of that is relevant, and it's a kind of 50/50 situation. As you point out, there's more than one way to look at it.

I think we are likely to see the A350 head to PER soon to compete with QF's PER-LHR plans, which incidentally will also slash capacity out of MEL.

I see the SYD situation as a sign that the A380 just isn't doing what it was meant to. The whole point of the plane was to carry large volumes of passengers in and out of congested airports where sufficient demand existed to fill it. Instead we see only two A380s per day and then up to four additional 777s, some flying almost at the same time. SQ247/8 for MEL will also fly an A330 at similar times to existing flights which could instead be upgauged to an A380.

This is where the A350 seems to be winning because you can fly smaller groups of people more economically at times closer to when they want to fly. CDG used to get 10 or more flights per week across two timings using 77Ws before the A380 came along and forced everyone to fly at the same time each day, also shifting capacity off busy days onto quieter days in its one-size-fits-all approach.

Maybe the A350 should be heading to CDG and ZRH to provide more connections and greater Thu-Sun capacity.

[9V-SPL]

The inaugural service to Stockholm-Arlanda (ARN) launches tonight (30MAY17).

SQ362 (SIN-DME-ARN) is scheduled to be operated by A350-941 (9V-SME) from gate B8.

[9V-JKL]

That's interesting. Most of the inaugurals have been using SMF

[SQavgeek]

The first flight to Stockholm just arrived at ARN.