Carry on: Retro 'roo returns, Hawaiian's new cabins and more

Qantas livery goes retro again …
Qantas is painting a second Boeing 737-800 in a retro livery but hasn’t revealed which of a dozen to choose from. The aircraft, to be known as Retro Roo II, will be one of 67 in the 737 fleet. The repainting will take four days before the plane re-enters service on flights across Australia and the Tasman to New Zealand. Qantas has had 12 liveries since its first aircraft in 1920. The first Retro Roo was given a 1970s styling last November.

… and expands codeshare agreements
Meanwhile, Qantas is expanding its codeshare agreements with American Airlines and Alaska Airlines to more than a dozen destinations in North America and Mexico.They are: Alaska Airlines 
from San Francisco to Palm Springs, Portland and Seattle. The American Airlines destinations are from 
Los Angeles to Charlotte, Columbus (Ohio),
Guadalajara, Mexico City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, San Jose/Los Cabos
Los and Vancouver as well as
 San Francisco to Charlotte, Philadelphia
 and Phoenix.

Aloha to new premium cabins
Hawaiian Airlines will introduce new features to its premium cabins, including lie-flat beds on the Airbus A330 -200 aircraft serving the Honolulu-Auckland from June next year. The airline will also increase the number of premium economy (“extra comfort”) seats from 40 to 68. Chief executive Mark Dunkerley says this is to meet extra demand from business and leisure travellers.

“We have designed an experience that will usher in a new era in premium service to Hawai’i, one that resulted from a thorough review of guest feedback and intensive research to develop a best-in-class product for our long haul aircraft,” he says. The 180 degree seats, which fold into 76in beds, have been developed in partnership with Italian manufacturer Optimares and design consultancy Paul Wyde.

Boeing makes metal ‘light as air’
Researchers have created a metal for Boeing that is light enough to balance on top of a dandelion. Called microlattice, the material is 100 times lighter than styrofoam but is as rigid as metal. Despite its rigid exterior, its 3D open-cellular polymer structure means its structure is 99.99% air. The lattice is made up of interconnected hollow metal tubes – constructed from nickel, in the case of the prototype. Each of these tubes has a wall thickness of just 100 nanometres, which is 1000 times thinner than human hair. These open cells in the structure give microlattice huge compression potential, which means it can absorb a lot of energy.

Route news of the week
Singapore Airlines’ budget offshoot Scoot is taking over three of the parent airline’s flights on the Singapore-Dubai-Jeddah route. From May 1, the Boeing 787-8 operation will replace Singapore Airlines’ three times a weekly service and and overall flights to Dubai will be reduced from 10 to seven weekly. Air China will begin its first service to the Caribbean with flights to Cuba from December 27. This will be done by extending the existing three times a week Beijing-Montréal service to Havana using Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.

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