When you think “wet lease widebody”, you probably think of an elderly, inefficient Boeing 777-200 or Airbus A340-300 with seats from decades ago, questionable provision of inflight entertainment, and none of the bells and whistles that make up the modern passenger experience.

Watch dramatic MD-80 landing and see how low you can go.

Hi Fly, the Portuguese wet-lease operator best known for its decision to take an Airbus A380 — the only one to have entered the secondhand market — has a new proposal in the form of its Airbus A330-900neo, a modern aircraft with an equally modern interior.

“The acquisition of the A330neo aircraft is a significant step forward for Hi Fly, says airline president Paulo Mirpuri, noting that “we are in the vanguard of those who have taken delivery of the new aircraft and we are happy to be able to offer these latest airliners to our customers. Also, the addition of the A330neo to the Hi Fly Fleet leaves us operating the youngest, cleanest fleet in our history.”

Mirpuri, who has an eponymous environmental foundation, suggests the neo has a 14 percent reduced fuel burn compared with the A330ceo aircraft, of which the aircraft operates several split between its Portuguese- and Maltese-registered fleets.

Onboard the new A330-900neo, which from the seat plans listed by Hi Fly seems to be registered as CS-TKY, it’s a high-density configuration.

There are eighteen business class seats up front and 353 economy class seats throughout the rest of the plane pitched at 30-32” in Airbus’ charter/leisure/LCC 3-3-3 configuration.

That’s something of an ‘ouch’ down the back, especially for those ending up in a 30” row. The ultra-narrow nine-abreast layout is no fun for anyone who isn’t a small child.

(Interestingly, Hi Fly’s other A330 listed, 9H-SZN, seems much more premium, with 32 business class seats stretching the entire length between doors 1 and 2, then 31 premium economy seats and 237 premium economy seats in the more comfortable 2-4-2 layout, pitched at 31-32”.)

On the plus side, Hi Fly will be offering RAVE, the inflight entertainment system from Safran, formerly known as Zodiac. It’s a great IFE platform that should allow the airline to be flexible and responsive for the ‘circuses’ part of the ‘bread and circuses’ distraction tactic from discomfort at the knees and elbows.

Safran is also providing the business class seating, an implementation of its relatively premium Aura Enhanced product in a 2-2-2 configuration. These are fully flat seats without direct aisle access, and a surprising choice for the wet-lease operator.

I would have expected something with greater density: the “midnight clamber” from window seat across a slumbering aisle neighbor is by no means the worst with Aura, certainly compared with something like a Collins Diamond or Thompson Vantage.

In economy, Italian seatmaker Geven has provided the nine-abreast product, and while 3-3-3 is not going to win any width-related comfort awards it at least looks pleasant. The sea effect of the dark blue with light blue on the fabric feels surprisingly premium, even if the beige of the headrest and IFE surround is a little blah. It will be interesting to see the extent to which Hi Fly takes advantage of the A330neo’s LED lighting systems to wash these beige spaces with some color.

Also interesting will be passenger reaction to this aircraft from the airline where it first finds a home. Hi Fly president Mirpuri noted at the delivery of the A330neo that it will be heading to the “far east” for a “flag carrier”.

The only major airlines in the far east operating an aircraft with economy seating this narrow are AirAsia X and Cebu Pacific, although Philippine Airlines used to have a similar configuration before its pivot back towards being a premium carrier.

A crucial question: will passengers notice the difference?

The US-China trade war continues to drag down global airline activity with air cargo experiencing its ninth consecutive month of year-on-year falls and passenger figures showing a soft start to the northern hemisphere summer.

International Air Transport Association figures show global air freight markets contracted by 3.2 percent in July compared to the same period in 2019.

The Asia-Pacific, which accounts for more than third of air cargo, was particularly hard hit with volumes down 4.9 percent.

IATA attributed the fall to weak global trade — volumes are down 1.4 percent compared to a year ago —  and the intensifying dispute between the US and China, where year-to-date trade volumes have fallen 14 percent compared to the same period in 2018.

Nor is there any sign the situation will improve: the global Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) pointed to falling manufacturing orders since September 2018 and all major trading nations are reporting falling orders for the first time since February 2009.

“Trade tensions are weighing heavily on the entire air cargo industry,’’ IATA director general Alexandre de Juniac said.

“Higher tariffs are disrupting not only transpacific supply chains but also worldwide trade lanes.

“While current tensions might yield short-term political gains, they could lead to long-term negative changes for consumers and the global economy. Trade generates prosperity.

“It is critical that the US and China work quickly to resolve their differences.”

Slowing global airline passenger demand growth in July saw what IATA described as a soft start to the northern summer peak, although all regions still saw traffic increases.

Total global traffic in July rose 3.6 percent compared to the same month in 2018, down from 5.1 percent annual growth in June.

Monthly capacity increased by 3.2 percent and the global load factor rose 0.3 percentage point to a new monthly record of 85.7 percent.

“July’s performance marked a soft start to the peak passenger demand season,’’ de Juniac said.

“Tariffs, trade wars, and uncertainty over Brexit are contributing to a weaker demand environment than we saw in 2018. At the same time, the trend of moderate capacity increases is helping to achieve record load factors.’’

IATA noted that July international passenger demand rose 2.7 percent compared to July 2018, which was a deceleration compared to the 5.3 percent growth recorded in June.

Asia-Pacific airlines saw their weakest monthly international growth since 2013 – 2.7 percent – while North American airlines saw traffic climb 1.5 percent compared to the previous July, down from growth of 3.5 percent in June.

The airline trade association said this reflected the slowdown in US and Canadian economies and the trade dispute.

There was better news for domestic travel demand with global traffic growth in markets tracked by IATA rising 5.2 percent.

This was up from 4.7 percent growth in June and the domestic load factor also inched up to 86.5 percent.

Delving inside the “A320ski”, Russia’s Irkut MC-21 takes one back to the Tupolev Tu-204 from thirty years ago in the late 1980s. It was nicknamed the 757ski, and you may be getting your Shirley Bassey on with some history repeating with the Irkut MC-21, the Tu-204’s successor aircraft.

The MC-21 in Russian, stands for magistralniy samalyot, or “mainline airliner”, which the linguistically oriented will note means that it is actually the “MS-21” in its Russian equivalent since the S sound in the Latin alphabet is represented by the Cyrillic letter that looks like the Latin C.

WATCH: Incredible night time-lapse video of 737 landing.

In the great history of the 757ski and the Tu-144 “Concordski”, the MC-21 received its own nickname from wags: the A320ski. This small twinjet is aimed at exactly the larger end of the small airliner market that the A320 family and its A320neo successor is targetting, and is indeed offering one of the same engine option in the Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan PW1000G family, alongside homegrown Aviadvigatel powerplant options.

Indeed, the MC-21 comes in a bit bigger than the Airbus narrowbody’s fuselage. A cabin width of 3.81m within a fuselage of 4.06m compares with the A320 family’s 3.70m cabin width and 3.95m fuselage width. It’s interesting to note that both airframers therefore specify 25cm of sidewall space, or 12.5cm on either side of the cabin.

Inside, Irkut is showing 2-2 business class seats and 3-3 in economy, just like an A320 or indeed a Boeing 737 (or 757, 727 and all the way back to the 707).

What that means for the passenger experience is an opportunity for pleasantly wide seats: that 11cm difference means almost two centimetres per person additional room compared with an Airbus A320.

Translating into the imperial measurements that are frustratingly still standard within the industry, across the six economy seats that means the MC-21’s seats could be approaching 19” wide, which is almost an inch wider than the A320 and almost two more than a 737.

In business, that means the two seats on either side of the aisle each get a couple of inches more width.

That’s comfort you can take to the proverbial bank — but only if you have a supply chain willing to create a new wider generation of seats for these aircraft. Seats, too, are a very complex enterprise, as all the many delays to new aircraft and production of existing aircraft with new seats have shown. Without that, all you have is a really wide aisle and possibly some extra space on the window side of the seat rows, depending on how the MC-21’s seat track supports are located.

All in all, though, finding a seat maker to add width to a product that’s already certified shouldn’t be too hard given the number of smaller seat makers out there. It may not be the most elegant or most space-efficient in terms of pitch, but it should do the job.

But what’s on the outside matters too. Remember what Virgin Blue’s CEO Brett Godfrey said back in 2003 about the 737-800 vs the A320, one of which had sweeping, modern-looking winglets versus the less elegant wingtip fences? And don’t forget rule 17 from Clarence “Kelly” Johnson of Lockheed’s famous Skunk Works: “If it looks ugly, it will fly the same”.

Beauty is all subjective, but the MC-21 is no Il-62, nor a Tu-154.

The front end feels a little snubby, and not in the way that the A320’s nose is cute-snubby. Part of that may be from the flight deck windows, which give it the look of someone peering through ill-fitting glasses perched on the end of a nose too small for the frame design.

The tail looks too big for the airframe like an A330 vertical stabiliser was put through the washing machine on too high a heat. The wing is skimpy, feels a little too far forward, and is reminiscent of an A310 — but, crucially, without any kind of modern aerodynamic device on the end of it, whether winglet or raked wingtip.

It all just looks and feels a bit 1980s, and this stuff matters.

As is often true in aviation — and equally important in Russia — the context is important to understand. The MC-21 is manufactured by Irkut and was designed by Irkut subsidiary Yakovlev. All are part of the overarching Russian public-private airframer United Aircraft Corporation, and UAC has not been shy about reorganising its various component parts.

Designing, building, manufacturing and industrialising a modern airliner is one of the most complex and difficult enterprises humanity has yet achieved. In the same way that a substantial aim of the Mitsubishi SpaceJet, né Regional Jet, is to develop homegrown modern jet airliner production in Japan, and the Comac C919 and ARJ21 in China, the MC-21 is intended to do the same in Russia.

Indeed, it also aims stubbily towards the future of the Sino-Russian CRAIC consortium to create the C919 widebody — the A350ski, anyone?