Starlux Airlines is one of the newer players in the Asian civil aviation landscape which is raising some eyebrows. The carrier has had since its launch, in the worst possible time (January 2020), extremely positive reviews and feedback. However, 4 years down the road the airline clearly needs to expand its operations to achieve the scale it aims to have. Therefore the further aircraft order placed at the Singapore Air Show 2024 makes perfect sense.
In this post:
- Starlux’s New Order For Airbus Planes
- What Does Starlux Do?
- How Will Starlux Configure The Planes?
- Where Will the New Planes Fly?
Starlux’s New Order For Airbus Planes
The Taiwanese carrier has just placed a small but important expansion to its standing orders with Airbus. The number of planes placed on order at the Singapore Airline by Starlux Airlines isn’t of those that grab everyone attention. However it is a very important one relative to the current size of the carrier and its operations.
Currently Starlux Airlines operates a 21 plane strong fleet. The order for 8 planes, 5 freighters and 3 passenger liners, represents more than 30% of the current fleet.
The Taiwanese carrier ordered all wide body jets. Specifically:
- 5 Airbus A350F – Freighter Jets
- 3 Airbus A330neo – Passenger Jets
The A350Fs will be the first freighter planes the carrier will take delivery of and operate. A move that will differentiate the business lines Starlux operates in.
As for the A330neo, those should be A330-900s which are the larger sized new generation A330, which Starlux already owns and operates.
What Does Starlux Airlines Do?
Starlux Airlines is a very young carrier in the world of civil aviation. The operator first took to the skies in January 2020, extremely bad timing in hindsight, and has worked to make a name for itself as a premium carrier.
Currently it mainly operates within southeast Asia, serving most major business and leisure destinations along with 2 flights across the pacific to the US to San Francisco and Los Angeles.
With the arrival of the new freighters the airline will also enter the lucrative cargo business. Taiwan is an export heavy country as nearby, China, Korea and Japan therefore it can sustain multiple carriers running cargo operations.
How Will Starlux Airlines Configure The Planes?
The way the 3 additional A330neo planes will be configured tightly intertwines with how they will be used. The carrier will configure these wide body planes with:
- 28 Business Class Seats in a 1-2-1 layout and all seats between doors 1 and 2.
- 269 Economy Class Seats in a 2-4-2 layout
This is clearly quite a high density configuration for an aircraft type which is also capable of serving ULR routes. For those of you reading in Europe this might see quite odd, a wide body as the A330-900 configured in this way optimised for short and medium haul flights.
However it is quite more common in the far east where short hops connect mega cities which require huge capacity to satisfy the demand for air travel. The most emblematic example of this is Japan where you see A350s, or 747s in the ’90, operating domestic flights.
As I talked about in the A330neo to A350 comparison post, the A330neo is also optimised to serve shorter high frequency services. Part of its redesign had exactly the use that Starlux Airlines is looking to make of it in mind.
Where Will the New A330neo Planes Fly?
As the configuration is quite dense for these planes, you might have guessed that they won’t be serving those extremely long transpacific routes to the US.
They will instead be used for high-capacity/high-demand flights within east and southeast Asia. The currently owned A330-900s are used on services from Taipei to Tokyo, Singapore, Bangkok and Sapporo. All flights that are within 5 hours of length.
This is quite a comfortable way to travel if we compare it to what has sadly become the norm in European short and medium haul travel where we get more and more cramped in small seats in what is to all extents a pseudo low cost configuration.
Images courtesy of frugalflyer.ca
Add Comment