A350-900 - MSN98 (IB) EC-OAV [ex.HU #1 - B-1069]
Oct 25, 2017 11:36:54 GMT 1
philidor, Jkkw, and 3 more like this
Post by ca350 on Oct 25, 2017 11:36:54 GMT 1
My airline contact in China told me two weeks ago, neither Capital Airlines nor Sichuan Airlines are expecting to operate any A350 before the year end, although Sichuan is way ahead of Capital by investing a lot of money on equipment and training. (But Capital can always "borrow" resources from Hong Kong Airlines, like maintenance work.)
HNA may have to load a lot of frames to Hong Kong Airlines first, then bring them back to the mainland, like they did with A330s.
HNA is in a very difficult position for the next few years, as they are not state owned, they are not going to have a big share in the new Beijing international airport (CZ and MU will dominate 80% of slots). HNA is trying to have quite a few small airlines (Capital is one of them) fly long haul from varies second tier city locations, these market are very small, heavily rely on local government payment (normally last 2-5 years, like BA received from Chengdu). That's why they switched Azul order.
- Sichuan's A350 training has been going on for a long time because they initially aimed the end of this year as EIS time. But as I said in MSN 55 thread, the latest rumour is that the first delivery is pushed back to Feb 2018. That makes 3U as the launch operator of A350 in China in doubt.
- Hong Kong Airlines is important to HNA in that it's not only expanding to a huge market in Hong Kong. But more importantly they could work around some regulations that's specific to mainland China carriers. As some might have heard there's a so-called widebody limit policy form CALC that limits Chinese Airlines' widebody annual increase to a certain number. This is the reason why for example MU will be returning 10 A333 thats coming up lease next year while taking deliveries of new 242T MTOW A333. HNA group in the other hand expands their widebody fleet like crazy, getting 9 787-9 this year without retiring a single widebody. That's how Hong Kong Airlines work for them. HNA buys aircrafts under HX's name and leases back to Hainan, Capital or Tianjin etc.
- Beijing new airport. AFAIK Capital Airlines will move but Hainan won't. So naturally Hainan will take over T2's slots from CZ and MU big time, which is a huge volume increase. I don't see Hainin will have trouble in Beijing.
- As for A350. The original plan is CA, 3U and HNA each getting one this year. Let's see how it plays out.
