Korean Air ‘Queen of the Sky’ B747-8i 5 units
They decided to give it to a US airline for 920 billion won
“Improving efficiency by selling very large aircraft”
’60 units in 8 years’ pace of introduction of the next generation model
Officials clean the fuselage of a B747-8i aircraft at the Korean Air maintenance hangar at Incheon International Airport in Yeongjongdo.
Korean Air sells five B747-8i, known as ‘Queen of the Sky’, to an American airline. It looks to get rid of super-large aircraft that have become ‘money-eating hippopotamuses’ and improve the efficiency of fleet operations, while speeding up unnecessary fleet liquidation ahead of the merger with Asiana Airlines.
According to the aviation industry on the 9th, Korean Air held a board meeting on the 8th and decided to sell five B747-8i to American aircraft company Sierra Nevada Corporation. Korean Air recently announced that it had decided to cancel five aircraft for 918.3 billion won, but did not reveal the specific model due to contractual issues.
According to Korean Air, the company had a total of 9 B747-8i at the end of the first quarter of this year. If five of these are dealt with in order by 2025 according to the contract, only four will remain. Since the introduction of the B747-8i model in 2015, Korean Air has been using it on long-haul routes such as Incheon to New York and Europe.
The B747-8i, manufactured by Boeing in the United States, is the last passenger aircraft model in the B747 series. It is capable of a continuous flight of up to 14 hours and is a long-range aircraft that can operate up to 15,000 km without intermediate refueling. It uses four engines and can reach a speed of Mach 0.86, the fastest among large passenger aircraft.
Thanks to its strengths of being fast and stable, it was chosen as the president’s plane and is currently carrying out the ‘Code One’ mission. In 2021, the Moon Jae-in administration signed a 300 billion lease contract with Korean Air for the B747-8i model for five years until 2026.
However, recently the 747-8i has not been so popular in the aviation market due to the shortcomings of low fuel efficiency and difficulty in dealing with the global trend of enhancing carbon emissions. A Korean Air official said, “Boeing will stop production of the 747 series from 2022, so parts production is decreasing, so operating costs are increasing.” This cost burden is why Korean Air listed the related equipment for sale less than 10 years after its introduction.
news/cms/202405/09/news-g.v1.20240509.22b50fc3cee44a9797caa33eb2ed8605_R.jpg" data-width="330" data-height="232"/> enlarge picture In addition to the 747-8i, Korean Air also plans to do partial work on three ultra-large Airbus A380 aircraft, known as ‘hotels in the sky’. As the maintenance burden increased and sales became difficult, they chose to dismantle the equipment and filter out the parts.
Instead, Korean Air plans to introduce new, more fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly aircraft in the medium and long term. In March this year, Korean Air signed a contract worth 18 trillion won by Airbus to buy 33 A350, a modern medium-to-large aircraft. The A350 is known to not only improve fuel efficiency by 25% compared to similar models, but also reduce carbon emissions by 25%.
Korean Air plans to introduce 60 new aircraft in a row, including the A350, from the second quarter of 2024 to 2032.
Meanwhile, Korean Air’s preliminary performance for the first quarter of this year was recorded at KRW 3.8225 trillion in sales and KRW 436.1 billion in operating profit. This is an increase of 19.6% and 5.1%, respectively, compared to the first quarter of last year. Net profit was recorded at 345.2 billion won, down 2.9% from a year ago. Sales increased by 20% compared to the previous year due to a rapid recovery in passenger traffic and solid cargo demand, while operating profit also increased by 5% despite factors such as increased fuel costs, port costs air and freight, and higher labor costs due to wage increases. On the other hand, net profit fell 2.9%, reflecting the gains and losses of foreign currency translation due to the weakening won.
2024-05-09 09:34:37
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