You just cannot afford to stand idle in the aviation industry. Not looking far ahead enough into the future in terms of fleet structure can be extremely costly. Millions, if not billions of dollars, can be left on the table years down the road without an effective fleet planning. With long waiting lists for aircraft, carriers are forced to plan even further in advance. To stay ahead of the market trends as it prepares to re-expand in one of Japan's key airports, ANA just announced a hefty aircraft order split among the three main aircraft manufacturers.
ANA Orders Planes For Main Line and Peach – Up to 77 Planes Joining the Group
I covered just yesterday how the Japanese airline has ordered up to 20 new generation Embraer E190-E2s. Those aircraft are part of the order the group announced following its board of directors meeting. However, I won't cover it again in this post as I went into more detail of what makes that order special and why the E2 program is still facing difficulties in that other post. Make sure to head over to it and read that one too if you are interested in the topic.
| A321neo | A321XLR | Boeing 737-8 | Boeing 787-9 | Embraer E190-E2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firm Orders | 24* | 3** | 8 | 18 | 15 |
| Options | – | – | 4 | – | 5 |
| Converted Prior Options | – | – | 10 | 5 | – |
| Total | 24 | 3 | 22 | 23 | 20 |
This most recent order includes aircraft from all three major manufacturers: Boeing, Airbus and Embraer. I've market a couple of numbers with * and ** let me explain why:
- * 10 of the 24 Airbus A321neo ordered will be destined to Peach. That is ANA's low cost subsidiary which mainly operates short to medium-haul routes in and out of Japan.
- ** All three A321XLRs ordered will also be going to Peach, enabling the airline to serve longer ranged services in its network.
ANA new firm orders stack up to 68 with options for another 9 planes which the carrier can convert into orders at a future date.
Speaking of converted options, along with announcing new firm aircraft orders, All Nippon Airways has also announced it has converted into order options for 10 Boeing 737-8 (MAX) and 5 Boeing 787-9. It held the right to those options as part of orders placed respectively on: January 29th 2019 and February 25th 2020.
Why The Need For All These New Aircraft By All Nippon Airways?
Part of why the Japanese airline group needs these aircraft I explained at the beginning of the post, but there is a more detailed explanation to this order and its aircraft type composition.
The Japanese airline stated in one of its press releases that it expects to grow, from 2023 levels, by 2030 its ASK (Available Seat Kilometers) by 1.5 times. The increase in seats offered will be brought online to accomodate expected future air transport growth for the upcoming years.
Also, after several years of playing things calm over at Tokyo Narita, the airline is planning to start expanding its operations once again at the international airport. Therefore, not to spread the fleet too thin there will be a need for new aircraft to serve long-range routes and feeder services to them.
So far, from what came out of this most recent board of directors' meeting, no planes will be allocated, out of those ordered, to the other ANA owned subsidiary Air Japan. However there might be later announcements or internal decisions to shift aircraft arrivals according to necessity.
