Thai revamps JFK A340-500 to an A330

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Fuel prices force Thai to drop A340-500 non-stops to USA
By Leithen Francis
Airline axes New York and Los Angeles direct services but agrees A380 reparations

Thai Airways International is abandoning its non-stop services to Los Angeles and New York, which it operates with Airbus A340-500s, due to high fuel costs. Meanwhile, the airline has reached a deal with Airbus to acquire eight A330-300s at a discounted price as part of compensation for the delay to its A380 order.

Thai confirms that it will revamp its five-times weekly non-stop services from Bangkok to Los Angeles and New York Kennedy into one-stop services, and is considering either Seoul or Shanghai for the stopover point, although it gives no timeframe for the move. The confirmation comes in response to public remarks made by the airline's president Apin Sumanaseni.

Although the stopover will enable the airline to pick up passengers, it denies that poor passenger loads are the reason for the change. "The cabin load factor is very good. Before we flew to Los Angeles [via Osaka] using Boeing 747s which have 400-plus seats," which is more capacity than the 215-seat A340-500s used today, it says. The main reason for the change is that the "cost of having direct flights to the USA is very high" in terms of fuel and other costs, it adds.

Thai has three A340-500s in service (plus one on backlog), which it originally ordered specifically for non-stop ultra-long-range services. The flag carrier's first non-stop service to the USA started in May 2005.

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That sucks.

However flights will go daily apparently until the nonstop flight is pulled.

Tommy, Thai doesn't own any A340-300s.

I'm guessing the flight will be taken over by either a 747-400 or one of their new 777-200ERs.

This is too bad, they were promoting this heavily but I guess they weren't able to capture enough premium cabin revenue to keep it going at the high costs they describe in the article.

That said, I am not sure who (other than John Carr) was using the nonstops from the US as Bangkok is much more of leisure destination than, say, Singapore or Hong Kong which get alot of high-margin first and business class pax.

Thai aviation has had a rough time lately, apparently the new Bangkok airport has been plagued with problems and some services have been shifted back to the old one, etc.

I guess soon EK will have the only -500 at JFK as the third one is EY and someone said here they are putting on a -600 soon.

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Originally Posted by Iberia A340-600

Tommy, Thai doesn't own any A340-300s.

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Originally Posted by T-Bird76

(from the article) Meanwhile, the airline has reached a deal with Airbus to acquire eight A330-300s at a discounted price as part of compensation for the delay to its A380 order.

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Mike

I don't think the article is implying A330s will be used for BKK-ICN/PVG-JFK.

The A330s don't have the range for ICN/PVG-JFK. The -300 does not come close, and the -200 would face heavy restrictions (it would need 500-1000 more miles).

I'd expect a 772. 744 would be nice, but I doubt it.

-Will

so when can we expect to see the first Thai B777 or B744 at JFK? any dates....anyone???

- Josh

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Originally Posted by SoPictureThis

so when can we expect to see the first Thai B777 or B744 at JFK? any dates....anyone???

- Josh

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No indication as to dates where mentioned in the article. Thai recently announced they will be going daily on the BKK-JFK route starting May 1st so I'm not sure how long after that they will pull the A340-500 and the nonstop.