It’s one down and 48 to go as a crowd of about 3000 watched Singapore Airlines take delivery of its first Boeing 787 -10 at the US manufacturer’s plant in Charleston, South Carolina, Sunday.
The newest variant of the popular twin-engine composite plane is due to enter service next month with Osaka and Perth to become the first scheduled destinations in May. Prior to this, the aircraft will be operated on select flights to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur for crew training purposes.
The 787-10 is the biggest member of the 787 family and Singapore will be using it on medium-haul routes in a two-class configuration featuring 36 business class and 301 economy seats. Long-haul low-cost subsidiary Scoot already files the smaller 787-9 and 787-8 models.
The bigger variant cannot fly as far as the 787-9 — Boeing puts its range in a typical two-class configuration at 6430 nautical miles (11, 910km) as opposed to the 787-9s 6430 nm (14,140km) — but the company says it can still cover 90 percent of global commercial airline routes.
However, it promises a 25 percent fuel reduction per seat on the aircraft it replaces, up from 20 percent on its sister Dreamliners, and Boeing claims it will beat the competition by 10 percent.
The Singaporean carrier is using the 787-10 to introduce new regional cabin products to be officially unveiled with the plane’s arrival in Singapore on March 28.
The new regional products come after last year’s unveiling of a $US850m revamp to its Airbus A380 fleet.
READ The XL guide to Singapore Airlines’ new A380s.
“The 787-10 is indeed a magnificent piece of engineering and truly a work of art,’’ SIA chief executive Goh Choon Phong Goh said at the delivery event. “It will be an important element in our overall growth strategy, enabling us to expand our network and strengthen our operations.
“The delivery of the first 787-10 underscores our longstanding commitment to operate a modern fleet, and marks the start of a new chapter in our shared story with Boeing.”
Singapore ’s firm order of 49 787-10s makes it the biggest customer for the plane and it also has orders for 20-777-9s due for delivery from the 2021/22 financial year.
Other 787-10 customers include Etihad, Emirates, British Airways and Japan’s All Nippon Airways.
Since 2011, more than 640 Dreamliners have entered service, flying more than 230 million people on more than 680 unique routes around the world, saving an estimated 23 billion pounds of fuel.
