An additional delay in delivery of Boeing Co’s 787 has caused Continental Airline to further postpone its flights to Auckland from Houston originally scheduled for November 2011. The flights to Auckland with Continental Airways are now likely to start operating sometime in 2012
Continental Airways is Houston based airline, which is a unit of United Continental Holdings Inc. At present no definite date has been given by Continental Airline of when it will receive its Boeing 787 aircraft. The delay that has forced Continental to postpone its new flight route is said to be resulted by Boeing’s decision to revise its production schedule after a test jet caught fire. Continental Airline was the first Boeing 787 customer and according to the original agreement with Boeing Co., the airline was to receive its Boeing 787 Dreamliner in March 2009.
Continental has placed an order of 25 Boeing 787 Dream liners and expects to receive their delivery schedule sometime early next year.
Continental Airline aims at connecting Houston with worldwide destinations as indicated by launch of flights to Lagos, Nigeria from Houston with a Boeing 777 instead of Boeing 787 as originally decided. However, the Houston-Auckland route has not been put up for selling yet. Julie King, spokesperson for Continental Airline has stated:
“We are committed to the route, but it works with a 787, given that it’s the right sized air craft to meet the demand in the market”.
It’s understandable, that for flights to the other continent, factors like number of seats, size of plane, design, leg room, fuel carrying capacity and other important technical elements are to be highly influencing.
Another Boeing 787 Dreamliner customer, Delta Airline has also undergone similar delays in receiving the order and eventually the airline ended up deferring the deliveries of 18 Boeing 787 dreamliners into next decade.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.