Emirates Toys With 747-8I

While Emirates is now known as an airline heavyweight, its history and birth are far less flamboyant. Pakistan International Airlines leased one Airbus A300 and one Boeing 737 to the UAE emirate of Dubai, and the airline, Emirates was born. That was back in October 1985.

Having had the pleasure of flying the newly formed carrier for the first time back then, it has certainly made huge strides forward in becoming an industry bellwether ever since.

All images courtesy of Emirates

Twenty three years later, Emirates has a backlog of 244 new airplanes totalling some $60bn. Mind-boggling, eye-watering some would say. Without getting into semantics of how the airline is run, under the guidance of His Highness Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, Emirates has succeeded as a Government run airline while the founding airline, Pakistan International Airlines, battles with an aircraft shortage after retiring its 747 Classics while fighting costs and corruption.

The chasm could not be greater between the two.

Or in fact between Emirates and any other airline, if you will.

With 58 Airbus A380’s on firm order, along with countless Boeing 777’s and soon to arrive A350XWB’s, the Emirati carrier appears to have little room for any other widebody jet. Or does it?

Earlier this month, Emirates announced plans to operate the 777-200LR non-stop to San Francisco, hot on the heels of its planned services to Los Angeles. The original intention was to have used the 747-8I on both of these routes, however, the carrier has publicly stepped back a little from committing to the said airplane.

“Who says we’ve ruled out the 747? Certainly not us. You should know, at Emirates, nothing is impossible,” says a senior source at the airline, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Were it not for ILFC CEO Steven Udvar-Hazy referring to the A380 cargo capability as “dismal“, Emirates would certainly have considered using the big Airbus jet on the US West Coast.

The 747-8I is the unlikely airplane that holds a strategic advantage over the 777, 787, A350 and A380.

Rumours have been emanating for a while that the December 2007 order of 787’s by Dubai Aerospace Enterprise are destined for Emirates to replace its ageing Airbus A330 fleet, but as it stands today, the airline is among the few big airlines that is not a 787 customer.

Leasing companies ILFC and GECAS (as of writing) have no spare 777’s to offer in the short term, and that was part of the reason the carrier opted to extend leases on the 777-300’s up until 2019.

In lieu of the third major delay for the 787, Airbus has already acknowledged it stands to gain nothing - and with Emirates first A350-900 not due until 2014, again, the carrier has nothing in between now and then to get going and expand US West Coast services even further. Realistically, what else is there that Emirates can lay its hands on before 2014 or sooner?

The 747-8 Intercontinental.

Lufthansa is the only major airline customer for the airplane, aside from a handful of VIP orders. During 2009, production will be centred on the 747-8F and 747-8I. There is also significant scope for Boeing to ramp up production to facilitate any new orders - given the ease at which it can do so based on the existing global supplier teams and infrastructure in the Everett factory that is already in place, talks between Emirates and Boeing on the 747-8I are by no means over.

Since 2000, Boeing has produced on average 15 747’s a year. Based on 2007 deliveries, that equates to approximately 1.3 airplanes a month - ramping up production to facilitate more orders is certainly more easier to attain in the near term than any other widebody available today, or indeed, within the next five years.

Equipped with the General Electric GEnx-2B engines, commonality of the 747-8I will be at the forefront of Emirates planning. Emirates SkyCargo is already a 747-8F customer; training, maintenance, support and inventory will already be in place and adding the 747-8I to the fleet will cost very little. The airline cargo division also operates 747-400F/ERF’s too.

“Corporations will want us to be as green as possible, so we don’t want to be flying 10-year old aircraft with yesterday’s engines. We want aircraft with next-generation engines, the largest payload and best fuel-efficiency,” said Atlas Air CEO, William Flynn.

By the time the 747-8F and 747-8I enter service, the two jets will sport much newer and efficient engines than those of the larger A380, of which Emirates is the largest customer.

“Boeing and GE are working very hard to meet the [Emirates] range/payload requirement with both engine and aircraft configuration improvements,” says BCA President & CEO, Scott Carson.

Equipping the 747-8I with less than the Boeing illustration of 467 seats in a tri-class configuration, Emirates has been leaning toward a seat count reduction to enable the airplane to attain the 8,300nm range with a capacity of 50 tons of freight sought for Dubai-Los Angeles flights, even though a direct flight could be just 7,300nm (according to data on the Great Circle Mapper, however this is not indicative of any filed flight plans Emirates may or may not have).

There’s no question that Emirates was deeply disappointed by Boeing’s decision not to offer a shorter fuselage length 747-8 Intercontinental, but it is understood that the two parties are now converging more on definition of the airplane than they were just six months ago.

In Boeing retaining a common fuselage length for the 747-8 family and trading range for capacity on the passenger variant, Emirates will likely compliment its 777-200LR fleet with a three-class seating arrangement. As of writing, no definitive figures could be attained from the airline with a view to the 747-8I.

“Seat-mile costs for the 747-8 Intercontinental are 11 percent lower than the 747-400, with nearly equivalent trip costs. The 747-8 Intercontinental is more than 10 percent lighter per seat than the A380, and consumes 11 percent less fuel per passenger. That translates into a trip-cost reduction of 19 percent and a seat-mile cost reduction of more than 4 percent compared to the A380. ” - Source: Boeing

While Lufthansa will likely be the first operator of both big airplanes, it is Emirates that is seeking to plug the seat gap above its 777-300ER’s and below its A380’s.

It’s not that the big Arab carrier doesn’t have other options - the reality is that in the near term, for all the comments seen and heard about potential 747 sales that have failed to materialise, this is one that makes sense for both airline and manufacturer.

Landing Emirates as a customer will not just be a significant boost for the 747-8I - it will fill a void in their fleet. The Farnborough Air Show isn’t that far away. The two may yet dance hand-in-hand.

8 comments April 21st, 2008