Qantas' New A321XLR

[kookaburra75]

And now it's off to Melbourne. While it was on the ground they had a lot of different groups of people poking and prodding it, for training and familiarisation I presume

 

[LionKing]

VH-OGB is now named as Outback Way.

 

[Larko1]

I reckon a better name would have been "The Outback"

 

[Layslow]

I reckon a better name would have been "The Outback"

WTF? The Outback Way is one of he most insane pieces of road infrastructure in Australia. It's 2700 Km's in length and cuts through QLD, NT through to Laverton in WA. They are in the process of spending billions to upgrade it and up until the last few years, was not in great shape.

 

[Steve994]

Sure, but AA have ordered it to fulfil a medium to long mission, with the aircraft mainly expected to serve thinner trans Atlantic routes, combined with SFO/LAX-JFK/BOS transcons. They have a fleet of older A321s with a similar config that they utilising on the transcons already but struggle with poor utilisation as these don't have the range for trans Atlantic. However, they can't generate appropriate yield on other domestic sectors, so the plan is for a bigger fleet and to intermingle with a trans Atlantic fleet to generate necessary utilisation.

On the other hand, Qantas won't utilise it on longer missions, hence the product. People still seem to be convinced that Qantas are somehow bullshitting us and that the XLR with this config is going to be flying long missions, despite their consistent indications that it's a B737 replacement. Yet, on another thread here today, everyone is also speculatively convinced that they're going to be flying 4-class A350s to Asia in a few years.

Markus Svensson's discussion at CAPA a few weeks back was once again pretty clear that it's a B737 replacement. He even explained why it's range is important to Qantas, specifically highlighting how the B737 is payload restricted on westbound transcon sectors. Now if a B737-800 is payload restricted, a A321neo is going to be far more payload restricted.

If it was just a replacement for the 737, without the payload restriction on westbound transcon flights, wouldn't Qantas have just ordered the A321LR instead of the XLR?

 

[moa999]

wouldn't Qantas have just ordered the A321LR instead of the XLR?

See evanb's very detailed analysis.

Why Qantas ordered the A321 XLR without lie-flat business class seats?

We recently wrote on the impact of the A321neo LR on Qantas and Jetstar, highlighting how the LR has taken over the bulk of Jetstar’s medium-haul flying from the B787 thereby allowing Jetstar to redeploy the B787 on longer sectors into Asia. Jetstar’s capacity expansion has covered Qantas’s...

www.analyticflying.com

Plus fleet commonality, and the ability to alter configuration if a better aircraft (eg. Rumoured MOM) comes along.

 

[evanb]

If it was just a replacement for the 737, without the payload restriction on westbound transcon flights, wouldn't Qantas have just ordered the A321LR instead of the XLR?

The XLR is an incremental improvement on the LR. To carry the extra fuel, the LR gives up a huge amount of the volumetric space in the forward cargo hold. But it also doesn't increase the MTOW a huge amount, meaning that lifting the extra fuel doesn't generate a big net payload improvement. The XLR carries that fuel a lot more efficiently, carrying more fuel than the LR but actually giving up less volumetric space, while increasing MTOW to lift the extra fuel.

But here is the kicker: the RCT on the XLR is lighter than the ACTs on the LR, so the empty weight of XLR is lower than the LR! In simple terms, the LR's extra fuel tanks are just heavy and take up too much space!