Airbus, Boeing vie as Qantas says “now is the time to buy”

As Airbus and Boeing vie for a multi-billion dollar Qantas (QF, Sydney Kingsford Smith) order to replace its ageing B737-800 fleet, the Australian carrier’s president and chief executive Alan Joyce has said at a conference that, as prices are so low, now is time to acquire them. The fierce runoff is between the A320neo Family and the B737 MAX, as Qantas looks beyond the expected recovery in demand for air travel in 2023-2024 through to the 2040s. “We have to replace the domestic fleet over the next decade. Now is the time to order aircraft because the prices are very good,” Joyce told The Australian Financial Review’s Business Summit, which took place at the Hilton Sydney on March 9-10, as quoted by Executive Traveller. “We know that aircraft prices are very attractive out there, so it’s a big opportunity for us to get really low prices for some period of time.” Attending to the domestic fleet is one of “two big projects we’ll have on,” the other being to reassess the viability of Project Sunrise flights, the direct routes connecting Australia and Europe which may now have the prospect of launching in mid-2024. Qantas revealed in February that it was considering launching a tender process later in 2021 to renew its domestic fleet. According to the ch-aviation fleets advanced module, the airline currently operates seventy-five B737-800s, which have an average age of 13.0 years. Of these, 33 are between 15 and 20 years of age. Sixteen of the 75 are leased, while 59 are owned. The airline also operates eighteen A330-200s, ten A330-300s, and eleven B787-9s, as well as twelve A380-800s that Qantas has placed in long-term storage. Qantas Group already has 109 A320neo Family jets on order (45 A320neo and 64 A321neo including the A321-200NX(LR) and A321-200NX(XLR) variants) for various low-cost affiliates such as Jetstar Airways, Jetstar Asia Airways, and Jetstar Japan, while the group’s regional carrier Network Aviation (NWK, Perth Int’l) operates routes in Western Australia under the QantasLink brand. Joyce has said previously that “we’ll take a decision closer to the time of delivery about which parts of the group will use these aircraft, but there is plenty of potential across Qantas and Jetstar.” However, basing Qantas’ future domestic fleet around the MAX would continue a relationship in place since October 1993, when the airline took delivery of its first B737, a B737-300, the first of twenty-one of the type according to the ch-aviation fleets history module, followed by twenty-two B737-400s.