Christmas is just around the corner and it’s time to unwrap some presents. For Swiss International Air Lines that translates planning to add some new planes to its fleet. However it won’t be an immediate change to the Swiss fleet lineup. Let’s take a closer look at what the news is all about.
Swiss To Receive Airbus A350s in 2025
The Swiss flag carrier announced on Twitter earlier today that they plan to receive and incorporate in their fleet 5 Airbus A350-900.
The A350 with its lightweight composite material and fuel efficient design, is rapidly becoming the go to aircraft for many airlines when it comes to LR and ULR flights.
Airlines, including Swiss, are preferring the 900 variant to the 1000. The smaller cabin is easier to fill up and have consistently higher load factors and operating costs are lower.
The Airbus A350-900 has racked up 739 orders against the just 149 placed for the 1000 variant. The 5 A350-900s that Swiss will acquire are part of an order for 25 of the type placed by the Lufthansa group in 2019.
Replacing Some Older Planes
The role of these new A350-900s will be to replace some older planes in the Helvetic airline fleet. Swiss operates a mixed Boeing and Airbus fleet. The only Boeing planes present in the lineup are the 777-300 used on long range flights. I don’t see these 777s leaving the fleet anytime soon, to make an all Airbus lineup, as their average age is just over 5 years.
Instead the Airbus A350-900s arriving from 2025 will replace the 4 ageing and fuel thirsty Airbus A340-300s the airline still operates to date.
These A340s are just around 20 years old. Also being quad-jets makes them significantly more fuel thirsty than other comparable twin-jet options.
It also makes sense for the airline to replace Airbus planes with the newer A350s as re-training crew will be an easier, cheaper and faster task than moving them over from Boeing operations.
We’ll just have to wait and see how many Swiss Airbus A350-900s will take to the sky starting 2025.
| A350-900 | A350-1000 | |
|---|---|---|
| Length | 66.8m | 73.79 |
| Fuselage Width | 5.96m | 5.96m |
| Cabin Width | 5.61m | 5.61m |
| Wingspan | 64.75m | 64.75m |
| Cruise Speed | M0.89 | M0.89 |
| Range | 15,372Km | 16,112Km |
| Fuel Capacity | 166,488l | 166,488l |
| Max Take-off Weight | 283t | 319t |
| Max Landing Weight | 207t | 236t |
