Airbus A321XLR

Without the 787s, Indigo will carry less cargo on long routes, though Walsh said the wider cargo trend still looks good.

Now for its international flights, Indigo will lean on the Airbus A321XLR, a single-aisle plane that's much smaller than a Boeing 787, but built to fly unusually far.

The XLR's job is to protect something valuable.

At busy airports like Amsterdam, airlines get fixed-time windows to take off and land, called slots.

That's the same with all low-cost carriers.

I'm sure that's the same as well with the Qantas A321XLRs.

Was there the rationale to put in-flight entertainment on their short-haul A321XLRs? Maybe not so much because passengers are coming on anyway.

You've got Wi-Fi, which we talked about last week, which is a bit sort of sketchy.

But anyway, it is free and it's available and passengers can use it for their own entertainment and Qantas have their own entertainment app as well.

So a lot of people are going to be mourning the loss of that configuration.

But there's no final word on when the A321T will be fully phased out, but it appears that the end of 2027 appears to be likely as American will get more A321XLRs in its fleet.

Now let's talk about last Monday morning because at half past eight Frankfurt time, an overnight flight from Washington touched down and almost 900,000 people had been watching it on flight trackers.

It wasn't an emergency, nothing went wrong.

Okay, so first Air Canada is rolling out the most significant cabin redesign in its history.

unveiling a new glowing hearted interior standard that will debut on its upcoming Airbus A321XLR and Boeing 787-10 aircraft.

New interiors were showcased at the Aircraft Interiors Expo, didn't know that existed, in Hamsburg where the airline highlighted changes across all classes.

from larger entertainment screens and redesigned seats to new premium suites designed to elevate long haul travel.

One of the biggest milestones comes on the Airbus A321XLR, which will become the first single aisle aircraft in Canada to offer lie flat signature class seats Jet set to enter service, apparently I think it's actually might be happening right now, I'm not sure, but it's expected to open new transatlantic routes and enhance premium service on longer North American flights.

The Boeing 787-10 will introduce an even more exclusive product, the Air Canada Signature Plus Suite.

So this, these front cabin suites offer more space, higher privacy walls, a larger bed, and a dedicated guest seat.

The airline has almost 200 on order from Airbus, and as these enter the fleet, they're dramatically pushing up the average capacity of the airline's narrow-body fleet.

They also plan to incorporate A321XLRs, a longer range variant, and outfit them with lie-flat premium cabin seats to replace the 757-200s, which serve premium transcontinental and lower demand long-haul routes.

The final category of predominantly domestic aircraft is a rather unique one.

In fact, United is the only US airline with it.

Yeah, but, but, but I think the caveat there, right, is a lot of these markets, so just like scroll through this list, right? You're, you're, you're, you're, you're not gonna fill 12 flatbed seats, right, from Seattle to Raleigh-Durham or Seattle to New Orleans, right? Those aren't the kinds of markets, um, that are able to support that type of, um, that type of premium product and that type of premium offering.

And I don't think, you know, it, it's an accident that they've chosen to go with 12 flatbeds on these 737 MAX 10s as opposed to the, you know, 16 that the carriers have traditionally had on their 757s or the 20 that they're now rolling out on their A321XLRs or the A321neo Coastliner.

It's not an accident.

The thing that's really interesting to sort of contemplate here, right, is that Alaska ultimately has 37 flights per day between Seattle, Portland, San Diego, LAX, and San Francisco on the west side, west co- western half of the US.

Czech Airlines-branded Airbuses will still fly under Smartwings' name, but those planes will be the only traces in the sky left of the once-vaunted airline.

On November 14th, the world's first commercially operated Airbus A321XLR took to the skies for its first transatlantic flight, flying from Madrid to Boston with the moniker ECOIL.

Operated by Iberia Airlines, this plane is much anticipated, the largest single-aisle jet currently in production, with a maximum range of 5,400 miles or 8,700 kilometers or 11 hours non-stop.

The XLR moniker refers to its extra long range and reflects Airbus's entry into a market previously served by the now-discontinued Boeing 757 and larger wide-body aircraft.

The route from Madrid to Boston is a smaller demand route offered by Iberia, whose economics would prove challenging operating year-round on a wide-body jet.

But because this jet is a middle-of-the-road, single-aisle aircraft whose range punches above its weight, Iberia can make this route work with fewer passengers per flight.

Iberia will expand its A321XLR service to its Madrid to DC route beginning in January, and other airlines have put in over 500 orders for the model already.

Within a number of years, this aircraft should make for plenty more transatlantic non-stops between destinations previously too low demand to justify long-haul flights.

Well, maybe there's an exception or two, Ed says.

A comment on United's new route announcements and the introduction of A321XLRs.

Patrick Quayle and team certainly do a lot of credit for what they're doing at UA, but listeners might be interested to know or be reminded Delta was the first to begin flying from New York JFK to Catania, Sicily, and Obeah Sardinia.

UA is being creative in a lot of ways, but to some degree, the motivation with these two new markets is, hey, we don't want Delta to own the market, so let's also serve them.

So Delta began serving both from JFK this past summer.

Note that while Ibiza isn't served by Delta, it's another of the new ones United will begin in 2027.

To be sure, any of these are low risk for United on the new, smaller, efficient A321XLRs.

Delta has been using 767-300s.