It will seem that China’s Hainan Airways could also be buying fairly a number of Airbus A330neos, although the best way we’re discover out is sort of uncommon…
Hainan Airways orders A330-900neo galley tools
As flagged by ch-aviation, Hainan Airways’ mother or father made an fascinating regulatory submitting on March 29, 2024, disclosing a transaction with Safran, for the needs of buying plane galley tools:
“The corporate plans to buy 20 units of plane cabin kitchen tools from Safran to assemble the corporate’s A330-900 plane. The transaction quantity shall not exceed USD23.592 million.”
A submitting like this isn’t uncommon, aside from the truth that Hainan Airways doesn’t function Airbus A330-900neos. I feel it’s not an excessive amount of of a leap of religion to imagine that maybe the airline is within the means of buying these jets.
Now, one would additionally assume that if the airline has to reveal a ~$24 million buy for galley tools, the airline would additionally must disclose spending billions of {dollars} on new jets. So, what could possibly be occurring there?
It’s potential I’m studying an excessive amount of into this, however in June 2023, plane leasing agency Avolon signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to order 20 Airbus A330-900neo plane. The tip buyer for these planes wasn’t disclosed, however remember that Avolon is majority owned by an oblique subsidiary of Bohai Leasing, and HNA Group (additionally the mother or father firm of Hainan Airways) owns a big stake in Bohai Leasing.
Whereas it’s potential that I’m approach off right here, it appears potential to me (and even doubtless) that these planes could be supposed for Hainan Airways. After all it’s anybody’s guess if that is correct, and with what timeline these planes could be delivered.
How the A330-900neo would match into Hainan Airways’ fleet
Hainan Airways has had main monetary points in recent times, largely attributable to issues with mother or father firm HNA Group. Nevertheless, the state of affairs appears to be stabilizing a bit.
For context, Hainan Airways has a fleet of roughly 200 plane, comprised of Airbus A330s, Boeing 737s, and Boeing 787s. For a while, the airline flew Airbus A350s, however most of these have been dumped, and are actually flying for different airways (together with Fiji Airways and ITA Airways).
Hainan Airways is at present flying 24 Airbus A330s, comprised of 4 A330-200s and 20 A330-300s (there are some further A330s which can be parked). The planes are a mean of round 10 years outdated, so that they’re not significantly outdated, although some airways do wish to refresh their fleets now and again.
Hainan makes use of its A330s for nearly every kind of routes — the planes fly all the pieces from brief haul companies inside China, to lengthy haul companies. The A330-900neo after all presents improved economics over earlier technology A330s, with decrease gasoline burn and extra vary, plus barely increased capability.
Backside line
Hainan Airways has disclosed an order for Airbus A330-900neo galley tools, which is a bit odd, because the airline doesn’t fly these jets. That appears to counsel that an A330-900neo order is imminent, or has already in some way been organized within the background, since airways don’t sometimes order galley tools for planes they don’t have.
The most effective idea as of now’s that plane leasing firm Avolon (which has comparable homeowners to Hainan Airways) positioned an order for as much as 20 A330-900neos final yr, so possibly these planes are heading to the airline? I assume we’ll discover out quickly sufficient…
What do you make of the prospect of Hainan Airways flying Airbus A330-900neos?
