737 MAX RETURN? - AIRLINE SURVIVAL | Aviation News

Hello, and WelcomeAnother start to the working week and anotheraviation newsweekly to get us underway, I hope you’re all doing well and have enjoyedyour weekend. In today’s blog, I’ll be taking a look at the battle for Norwegianand the domestic sector over there, KLM looking at the early retirement of aircraft and moreso stay tuned, I know you all enjoy these. Wizz Air has announced that it is planningon completely shaking up the Norwegian domestic market with the launch of three new services 

\The low-cost unit has been rapidly expanding during this pandemic, essentially constantlylaunching new services for customers and is now setting up its first base in Scandinaviawhich brings the start of these services in Norway, all of them originating in Oslo. The3 services from Oslo will be with the A321 and will rival Norwegian and SAS, one of whichis very much on its last legs. The flights with Wizz begin next month, however, manyhave called this potentially the end for Norwegian who have faced problems after problems thathave continued and been magnified with this current global pandemic. The Boeing 737 MAXs return date has been highly speculated for some time now with months beingflown all over the shop. 

We’ve had FAA executives say one thing and then airline executivessay the other, however, it all contributes to the aircraft’s return itself and withanother aviation news weekly it’d be wrong not include an update to its return to servicewithin the United States according to a Ryanair exeuctive. The FAA and Boeing have been workingon certifying the jet now for many months and that looks to be coming to a close. Thanks to an interview with Irelands Newstalk radio station the chief executive said The FAA (FederalAviation Administration) finished their test flights last week and it looks like it's goingto go back into service in the US in the next month or so and we'll take our first deliveriesas part of that order. The airline has 200 of the type on order and is also looking ata new sizeable order in the hundreds of the 737 MAX in the future. They expect the first MAX to arrive into their fleet early next year, being 2021 for anyone watching downthe line potentially. Whether this is actually going to happen is a whole other thing andI’d highly recommend taking dates nowadays with a grain of salt given what we’ve seenin the past, however, it’s still I believe worth mentioning to see what various othercustomers expect around the world. Over at KLM who as we know recently retiredtheir Boeing 747s talk has surrounded the early retirement of their Airbus A330s alongsidethe 747s due to once again the global pandemic. 

The airline was originally set to retire theAirbus A330 in 2025, so in some 5 years although those plans could now be changing as the airlineis reported to be in talks with its lessors over the aircraft. The thing is, the airlinedoesn’t have exactly an abundant of Airbus A330s, it has eight of the A330-200s and thenjust five of the A330-300s but it does still make a part of its operations that now KLMneeds to analyze whether or not are required to still be around with the gigantic dropoff in global pandemic and whether the other long haul or wide-body aircraft, if you will,can do the same job as their Airbus A330s moving forward, especially as demand slowlybut surely returns back to normal for the Dutch carrier. In an interview which was seenby a dutch news website the KLM CEO spoke on the early retirement of the A330 in whathas described an internal video, he said the following You have to imagine that those leasecompanies have about a hundred airlines who knock on the door and say, ‘Well, I havesome aircraft to return to you.’ That just doesn’t happen. So we are talking aboutit, we are looking into it, but going forward we will be using the Airbuses a bit longer. Highlighting the lengthy process to actually return these Airbus A330s. KLM is eyeing upin the future an all Boeing wide-body fleet and removing the A330s now, during a pandemiccould give them the most imperfect, yet also perfect solution to attain that goal thatthey want, but for now even earlier than they first imagined. In some more news surrounding Airbus, theyreported their order and delivery results for the month of September, a month that consistedof no new orders for aircraft but three cancellations. In more positive news the aircraft manufacturerdid deliver a seizable number of aircraft, that totaled 57 which is massively up fromprevious months. For example in April Airbus delivered 14 jets while in August they delivered39. Still, though the 57 from last month is down 14 from the 71 from September of 2019. 

Total yearly deliveries currently stand at 341 aircraft with 282 of those being for theA320 family of aircraft, a very popular option and one that’s quite easy produce. Despitethese 341 deliveries and an improved September, they are still down around 40% over theirnumbers for 2019 were at the same stage they had delivered 571 total aircraft to customersaround the world. A sign of how the industry has been hit during this global pandemic whichshows no signs of slowing down, especially in a sense of aviation. Airbus continued to deliver a lone AirbusA320 to Middle East Airlines or MEA and this A320 had the serial number of 10,000 morecommonly known as MSN10000. The Chairman and Director General of MEA commented on takingdelivery of the 1000th We are honoured to receive the state of the art A321neo withits distinctive serial number 10,000 coinciding with the 75th anniversary of Middle EastAirlines and especially after receiving MSN5,000 back in 2012. 

Since we first acquired an A320Family aircraft in 2003, we have not only benefited from the outstanding operationalefficiency of the aircraft but were also the first airline to introduce the wide-body cabinproduct on a single-aisle aircraft which has become a trend in the airline industry afterward. To shown the rapid progression in building aircraft within the Aviation Industry MEAactually welcomed in MSN5000 back in 2012 and this was some 23 years after productionfirst began on the Airbus A320 family, the 5000 we saw just pass now only took 8 yearsand can show you perfectly how rapid the advancements in technology have been and in addition therapid demand changes that while have disappeared now came with the changing times and growthin the overall population and therefore need for narrowbodies just like  the A320 family.