DELIVERY ON COURSE AS BOTH NEW AIRCRAFT’S ASSEMBLY ADVANCES
(Posted 17th October 2020)
(Pictures courtesy of Airbus)
Uganda Airlines first Airbus A300-800Neo was fresh out of the paintshop yesterday and presented Uganda’s national colours to the public on a sunny though partly cloudy day.
This will be Airbus’ first delivery of an A330-800Neo to Africa and by the look of it the first ever delivery of this aircraft type, after deliveries to Kuwait Airways were delayed. As a result will Uganda Airlines not only become Airbus’s African launch customer but global launch customer as far as deliveries go, bestowing an unexpected honour on the Ugandan national airline.
One of the questions ATCNews is often asked: Why the -800Neo and not the larger A330-900Neo?
The A338Neo has two major differences from the sister model A339Neo: These are capacity and range.
While the shorter aircraft type has the ability to carry up to 406 passengers can the sistership carry as many as 440.
Ordinarily though, airlines will configure this aircraft type in a three class layout of Business, Premium Economy and Economy Class, bringing the actual capacity of passengers carried to less than 250 but at the same time increasing cargo uplift.
The range of the A338Neo was given as up to 15,094 km which differs from the larger variant A339Neo with a lesser range of up to 13,334 km. This allows Uganda Airlines to fly longer routes nonstop with full load compared to the sister model.
And perhaps a third reason was that Airbus was very keen to sell this aircraft type and made price concessions to Uganda, which would have generated substantial savings compared to the list price of which is given as US Dollars 259.9 millions.
ATCNews will over the coming weeks provide further updates for readers on final assembly and outfitting, engine tests, ground tests and then finally the flight tests before the aircraft will be delivered to the airline in mid December.
