For Air New Zealand the arrival of the first of 14 Boeing Dreamliners a decade ago was a game-changer.
The revolutionary aircraft has become the cornerstone of its long haul fleet, allowed the airline to transform its network, get fuel savings of up to 30% and means passengers travel in more comfort.
To date the airline’s Boeing 787s have made 59,000 flights, logging 475,000 flying hours and carrying 11 million passengers.
Despite problems at Boeing, the airline is getting more of them; spending $3.5 billion on new ones and being the first airline to completely refurbish the model of the 14 already in its fleet from nose to tail.
He flies on the plane about every 10 days.
It’s been a ‘’no regrets’' purchase.
“The accountants love it, the pilots love it and more importantly, our customers love it as well,“ he says.
And the rash of negative news has now included how the 787 is built.
Whistleblowers have raised serious issues, including claims of the risk of potentially catastrophic failure. The planemaker has seen a reputation for innovation and quality slammed by claims it is putting profits before safety.
But more than 1100 Dreamliner aircraft are now in service and despite early battery glitches, have proved reliable and safe for dozens of airlines that operate them.
Morgan acknowledges the challenges Boeing has faced but says Air New Zealand has deep insight into how its own aircraft are built. Air New Zealand staff are on the ground at Boeing’s Charleston plant to monitor critical phases of assembly such as when wing body sections are joined to the fuselage.
The customer acceptance process is a week of poring over the planes that have a list price of more than US$290m ($480m). The inspection ranges from cosmetic checks of paint tones, any blemishes on surfaces and how seats are operating, through to how the plane performs in the air during rigorous test flights.
Morgan has been with Air New Zealand for 39 years and has flown nearly all the planes in its fleet during that time.
He says Dreamliners pass an important litmus test. “It’s a safe aircraft. I’m happy to fly it. But more importantly, I have no hesitation in putting my kids or my grandchildren onto the aeroplane.“
Airlines expect to have aircraft in their fleet for more than 20 years and return on investment calculations are based on this.
All aircraft have issues, he says. Air New Zealand hasn’t had problems with the aircraft itself; its issues are with its Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines, first with turbine blade failures in 2017 and now a protracted maintenance programme following corrosion worries.
“These things happen from time to time. You have to look through some of these things, there’s certainly no regrets [about the purchase] from the airline’s perspective.“
During the selection process for the Dreamliner, Morgan had experience in Airbus planes, the A340 (a strong contender) and the longshot plane for Air New Zealand; the A380.
He says that hands down the Dreamliner came out on top.
Pilots can easily transition from Boeing 777s – a key selling point for Dreamliners – but the technology available to them is a big step change.
Boeing has made standard a heads-up display, which was originally developed for combat pilots, that feeds key information to a small see-through screen in their line of sight.
“We always use it for takeoff and many of us use it at night especially if we are manoeuvring so that we have good situational awareness. It’s a great piece of kit.“
Much more data from the plane was being relayed in real-time to the airline, Boeing and Rolls-Royce.
It gets down to granular detail. On a recent flight, Morgan noticed the central maintenance computer function detecting that a potable water ultraviolet lamp sleeve was dirty.
“What that means is that the maintenance guys will see that that message come up and the next time the aeroplane comes into the hangar they’ll either replace the lamp or clean it.“
A big sales feature Boeing pushed with Dreamliners was the strength of their carbon composite fuselages allowing them to be pressurised to a lower altitude to make the flying experience more comfortable.
“Typically in this plane, right up to 43,000ft, (13,000m) which is a maximum altitude, the cabin’s down at 6000ft, whereas in the 777 for example, it’s 8000ft which is quite normal with most other aircraft.“
Over the course of an ultra-long-haul flight, this made a difference, although Morgan says not all crew members felt the same benefit. For him, a 14-hour flight in a Dreamliner feels the same as a 10-hour flight in a 777.
The aircraft are quieter on the flight deck and this meant less fatigue.
A “vertical gust relief system” improved its ability to manage turbulence.
“It means that the aeroplane flies more smoothly than aircraft that are not fitted with that.“
The carbon fibre pieces are lighter, stronger and more durable than metal parts, but are no less tolerant to damage.
They can take longer to fix if dinged by ground equipment but the airline’s engineers had built up a bank of knowledge during the past 10 years to more effectively maintain them.
Air New Zealand’s head of fleet strategy Baden Smith says the step change in technology allowed the airline to transform its long-haul flying.
“It is the first large-scale production composite aircraft.“
All the systems on the aircraft are mainly electric - powered by initially problematic lithium-ion batteries – as opposed to heavy reliance hydraulic systems on previous generations of aircraft.
This also contributed to them being lighter, with new airframes, wings and engine efficiency there was a step change in reducing fuel consumption, the biggest single cost for airlines.
“It always depends on your benchmark and your route, but it’s certainly in between that 20% and 30% and the other thing that it did is it gave us big, wide body efficiencies per seat efficiencies on a smaller aircraft,“ Smith says.
“It meant that we could fundamentally change the way we think about our route network.“
At the time Air New Zealand was considering signing up for the Dreamliner, many airlines opted to go big, the double-decker Airbus A380s.
“We were able to generate those kinds of efficiencies and the ability to move passengers around at that sort of cost base, but on a much smaller aircraft. It gives us the opportunity to go and fly in numerous places that you wouldn’t otherwise have had enough passenger flows to be able to achieve.“
“It meant you could go into places and provide that sort of service offering that you wouldn’t have been able to achieve on our bigger previous generation aircraft with economics that made sense,“ Smith says.
The arrival of the Dreamliners also coincided with a spike in demand for New Zealand as a tourist destination and the airline went on to make its strongest, consistent profits - until Covid-19 struck in 2020.
Just before the pandemic hit, the airline announced an order for eight of the stretched version of the plane, the 787-10 with options to buy 12 more.
“The reason why we doubled down on the 787s in 2019 was because we had already seen the benefits of the aircraft. From our perspective this is a great aircraft.“
It hoped to have the first of the planes in 2022 and while it deferred its order initially, Boeing production problems have pushed out delivery towards the end of next year.
Smith says he’s confident there won’t be further delays.
“We’ve been incredibly, heartened by the fact that Boeing has nothing to hide. We have monthly, very senior leadership calls, with the engineering and programme senior leadership they share with us where they’re working through some challenges,“ he says.
“What they’re dealing with is relatively small in respect to the 787, and we’re comfortable that they’re getting on top of it.“
But the engine issues had crimped the airline’s post-Covid recovery.
“We’ve got a sort of line of sight in terms of when we will be fighting fit again on having the full fleet up and running. Hopefully, we are through the worst bit through the next year, but these things don’t come better overnight.“
Air New Zealand had now formally converted the first of its new Dreamliners to 787-9s, Smith says, but retained, as a result of the flexibility built into the 2019 deal, the option to have the remainder restored to the larger 10-series model. Airlines don’t pay the sticker price for planes and Smith says Air New Zealand got a good deal, before the current aircraft shortage forced prices up.
“Today there’s plenty of demand for new aeroplanes out there, so I’m pretty comfortable that we struck at the right time.“
The new planes will have fully transformed interiors and while they would be similar to the first generation 787-9s, there were modifications to landing gear and wing structure that improved maximum takeoff weight by up to five tonnes.
Tweaks to fuel monitoring systems allow newer planes to carry more of it and the new GE engines have more thrust and are lighter – 6.3 tonnes instead of 7 tonnes.
Tweaks to the landing gear and wing structure made them even better profit drivers for the airline.
“It enables us to carry more, and the way that they’ve achieved that is a whole bunch of really small tweaks through the plane,“ he says.
“More thrust out of the engines means we’ve got better airfield performance. We can again lift a little bit more out of some of these ports around the world.“
The airline is constantly assessing new destinations. As new aircraft enter the fleet and the engine issues on existing ones ease, more destinations possibly in South America, South East Asia and India will be on the radar.
Leanne Geraghty, Air New Zealand’s chief customer and sales officer, was based in Australia at the time Dreamliners first entered the fleet and started flights to Perth.
“I brought some of our key customers over on it and I distinctly remember the take off - it was so quiet. We had people coming just at the airport who weren’t actually a part of the formalities just to watch that plane land. It was unbelievable.“
The plane’s large, electronic dimmable windows were immediately apparent once on board and its new air filtration system and higher levels of humidity helped wellbeing in the cabin.
“I think customers who are familiar with the 787 definitely like to fly on it because of all of those comfort and wellbeing elements.“
She said engine problems with existing planes and delays getting new ones were frustrating.
“Like most carriers that are impacted, it’s incredibly frustrating, particularly when we do have demand in certain markets. But we’re doing everything we can using other measures to try and make sure that we can make capacity available where we need it.”
By the end of the year, it will have three ex-Cathay Pacific dry lease 777s in its fleet to plug gaps.
And it is this month sending one of its existing Dreamliners to Singapore for a complete interior overhaul.
Skynest sleeping pods won’t be in retrofitted planes but will be in the new ones coming next year. The existing planes have between 275 and 302 seats.
New ones will be much more premium heavy with as few as 214 seats for markets such as North America and parts of Asia where there is strong demand for premium travel.
Grant Bradley has been working at the Herald since 1993. He is the Business Herald’s deputy editor and covers aviation and tourism.
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