This situation just keeps getting more interesting. Hi Fly is the first ever airline to get the A380 on the secondhand market, and they're also the first ever charter airline to have the plane. They recently took delivery of the A380, and even showed it off at the Farnborough Airshow. The plane had its first…
Continue reading: Air Austral’s Mysterious Hi Fly A380 Charter
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Just a point of correction.
This would actually be an ACMI lease rather than a charter. The key difference is that a charter operates under the traffic authority, callsign, flight numbers, etc.. of the operating carrier while an ACMI lease uses those of the lessee.
I'd say this a French government charter. That's the only thing I can think of that'd generate that much traffic, especially with no available sale seats.
The A380 flies OSL-PMI-OSL with pax today, making it the first evner A380 flying to or from Oslo with passengers (all other A380 visits have been without paying pax). The A380 is adding capacity helping Ving clear the backlog with stranded charter passengers due to the issues at Rhodos airport (which has caused successive aircraft delays within their self-operated fleet).
August 24 (in the evening?) the aircraft leaves CDG and probably arrives the next day august 25 (in the morning?) in Roland-Garros Saint-Denis de la Réunion.
One day rest for the crew maybe?
August 26 (early time around midnight?) the aircraft leaves RUN and arrives the next day in Paris.
Maybe something like this?
Note that end of august is just before "La rentrée" in France.
Schools start again for the kids and the parents have to be back to work, so a lot of family travel and all the issues around that every year.
Hmmm...Given that Air Austral at one time considered deploying an all economy A380, there must be some periods of heavy traffic where they need more capacity then a 77W.
It’s worth noting however that Air Austral’s 77ws are configured with 438 seats while Hi-fli’s ex SQ configuration seats approx 460. This suggests that once again the hi-fly 380 was leased due to a lack of availability of other suitable aircrafts versus its own merits. HI Fly and Airbus need to keep the champagne in the chiller as the business case for the 380 in the leasing market still remains unproven.
I somehow think that Hi fly will need to consider densifying the aircraft for it to be a viable proposition for mainstream airlines. Most major network carriers will need the aircraft during peak leisure travel periods and the SQ configuration is too premium for such routes. Most network carriers such as KLM, Air Canada, Air France already have 777s that seat north of 400 passengers hence a leased 380 with 460 seats will just not add any value. A configuration like Emirates two class version would be far more appealing for this niche- perhaps more so with lesser premium seats.
I suspect Hi fly is waiting to see the initial response before investing in a costly cabin refit however I just don’t see a market for these aircrafts unless they have more seats.
Lucky, my fiancé who is an FA for Norwegian just confirmed to me that Hifly is using their A380 on the LGW-JFK flight for them for the next 20 days, you were right!
They once considered getting their own A380s so they might be considering it again and using the Hi Fly one to test it out and see if it will work for them.
@Lucky
Remember in that original press release/ statement from Hi-Fly said that their long term lease was for summer 2019!
I believe that these charters we’re seeing are rather ‘last minute’ charters.
Norwegian shouldn’t have a problem filling those planes to JFK.
It seems also Air Austral needs to do some works on the engine on one of the B787.
So one aircraft is out of service and the lease of the A380 has been decided to cover it.
All of that has also some impact of the Mayotte-Paris direct service. Some passengers will have to travel via La Réunion instead of the direct flight.
The dates are school holidays. There are alot of 787 on regional service due to RR engines. I don’t believe their is much available capacity in the leasing market at the moment. Then again could be something to do with the pilot issue, it is a wet lease after all.