Business Travel Executive, January 2018

run British Airways London Heathrow Austin sojourn or Hainan Airlines Boston Shanghai flights and LATAMs nonstop twixt Santiago and Melbourne thats Australia not Florida are but a handful of examples The 787 has three variants the 787 8 9 and 10 Each is optimized for a specific mission The 8 was the first Dreamliner to hit the market It can be configured to carry 242 passengers in two classes and has a range of 8464 miles The stretched 9 variant can be rigged to fly 290 passengers in two classes at distances up to 8786 miles Finally the 787 10 can transport 330 passengers a more modest 7400 miles The trade off here is payload in this case passengers The more passengers on board the more weight Thus the more limited range When booking a flight for their travelers corporate travel buyers would do well to pay attention to the suffixes The 787 8 is the chosen instrument of British Airways on so called long thin routes runs that dont necessarily warrant daily service but can thrive employing 787 8s on a less than daily frequency This past year alone BA has lofted Dreamliners to New Orleans Oakland and Fort Lauderdale Come May it will be Nashvilles turn The self proclaimed capital of country music gets five weekly nonstops to London Heathrow If you and your traveler can tweak the arrivals and departure dates then Norwegian Airlines has a deal for you Tuesdays and Thursdays it offers 787 service from Oakland to Copenhagen Norwegian offers both Premium and Economy passage Enter Airbus Boeing isnt the only airframe manufacturer in the long haul market Airbus offers a worthy competitor to Boeings high flying 787s the A350 900 It comes in two types the A350 900 XWB typically can carry anywhere from 325 to 440 passengers and sports a range of up to 9321 miles depending on how many seats its fitted with And later this year the A350 900 ULR Ultra Long Range will debut on the much anticipated return of Singapore Airlines nonstop routes from Changi to both Los Angeles and New York The 900 ULR carries more fuel and packs a higher maximum takeoff weight This says Airbus means it can fly a marathon trip of up to 20 hours That range puts a whale of a lot of terra firma within nonstop range of the ULR In the meantime theres a good chance youll be seeing lots of A350 900s on a tarmac near you in 2018 As of Oct 31 there were 122 in operation globally this all coming from an order book of 681 aircraft Singapore Air has launched its A350 900 service on a number of nonstop destinations from Singapore including San Francisco Melbourne Johannesburg and Manchester Delta is a major proponent of the A350 behemoth It began flying the aircraft on the Detroit Tokyo Narita run in October 2017 and on select flights from Detroit to Seoul Incheon in November 2017 Detroit Beijing is ready to come on line Jan 17 Detroit Amsterdam and Atlanta Seoul Incheon March 24 and Detroit Shanghai on April 19