Carry on: Heaviest A330, Airbus v Boeing, Scoot's Australian partner

Heaviest A330 completes first flight
The first 242-tonne Maximum Take-Off Weight (MTOW) variant of the Airbus A330 has successfully completed its maiden three and-a-half hours’ flight. It is the platform for the future A330neo (new engine option) and offers more capability at lower operating cost with a range extended by up to 500 nautical miles (nm). Airbus executive vice president head of programmes Didier Evrard said this new higher weight variant will be delivered this year to launch customer Delta Air Lines, which will also be the launch customer for the A330neo.

Airbus beats Boeing on orders
Airbus says it won 1456 net orders in 2014, down from 1503 a year earlier but enough to pass Boeing's total of 1432. Gross orders totalled 1796, against 1550 for Boeing, giving Airbus a 54% market share. Speaking at an annual news conference, Fabrice Bregier, chief executive of the main planemaking unit, defended the double-decker A380, whose future has been left uncertain by a recent dearth of new airline orders. "The best days of the A380 are ahead," he said, pointing to increases in traffic that Airbus says would require the world's largest airliner. Boeing says airlines prefer smaller twin-engined jets that are easier to fill.

ALC places first A321 orders
Air Lease Corporation (ALC) is launch customer of a long-range version of the A321 with a 97-ton MTOW). ALC has ordered 30 of the new A321neo version with the first deliveries planned for 2019. The aircraft will be equipped with a third auxiliary centre fuel tank and could fly around 500nm further than the A321ceo with a regular 93.5 MTOW (and only two additional fuel tanks). Airbus claims the calculated 4000nm range even exceeds the 3850nm of the Boeing 757-200W (winglet-equipped). The longest current Boeing 757 route is United’s New York-Berlin service, which is slightly above 4000 nm and therefore can only be flown with less than maximum payload.

Scoot partners with Virgin Australia
Singapore Airlines’ budget offshoot Scoot has expanded its Australian network in partnership with Virgin Australia. Travellers to Australia on Scoot’s non-stop services to Sydney, Perth, Gold Coast or Melbourne (from November 2015) can now buy tickets through to eight additional cities: Adelaide, Uluru, Brisbane, Canberra, Cairns, Hobart, Launceston and Melbourne in a single transaction. Scoot first launched services from Singapore to Sydney in June 2012.

New Indian airline takes off
Vistara, the new joint-venture Indian airline between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, has launched flights between Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport and Mumbai's GVK Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. The airline is operating 148-seat Airbus A320-200 aircraft on the route. It has a three-class configuration with 16 seats in business, 26 in premium economy and 96 seats in economy.

Route news of the week
Garuda Indonesia has quit and changed some international flights in response to the weakening rupiah currency and unnamed "other factors" it says have affected airlines globally. It will quit the Denpasar (Bali)-Brisbane route from February 1. It will also reduce frequency on flights between Indonesia and Japan, retire some aircraft early, sublease others and cut the number of business-class seats on its Boeing 737-800s from 12 to eight. Other changes include reversing its plan to increase the Jakarta-Amsterdam and Jakarta-London Gatwick services, due to start from July 1. Qatar Airways has revised its planned Doha-Frankfurt service for March 2015, which sees the new Airbus A350-900XWB aircraft operating on two daily flights, from March 1-29. Previously the airline had scheduled two A350-900XWB services on March 1.