JetMonkey

12 hours from what our company has said.

Linebacker35

Thats just a short flight for a 340-500
Its nothin compared to AC's Toronto-Hongkong with the 500's.....16 hours

Guess thats why they have 4 pilots an something like 14-16 FA's for the flight

FreighterGuyNow

No way 12 - it's 15 ORD - PVG in a 747-400 which is faster than a 340

Typhoonpilot

More sauce for the debate:

Fuel prices force Thai to drop A340-500 non-stops to USA

By Leithen Francis

Airline axes New York and Los Angeles direct services but agrees A380 reparations

Thai Airways International is abandoning its non-stop services to Los Angeles and New York, which it operates with Airbus A340-500s, due to high fuel costs. Meanwhile, the airline has reached a deal with Airbus to acquire eight A330-300s at a discounted price as part of compensation for the delay to its A380 order.

Thai confirms that it will revamp its five-times weekly non-stop services from Bangkok to Los Angeles and New York Kennedy into one-stop services, and is considering either Seoul or Shanghai for the stopover point, although it gives no timeframe for the move. The confirmation comes in response to public remarks made by the airline's president Apin Sumanaseni.

Although the stopover will enable the airline to pick up passengers, it denies that poor passenger loads are the reason for the change. "The cabin load factor is very good. Before we flew to Los Angeles [via Osaka] using Boeing 747s which have 400-plus seats," which is more capacity than the 215-seat A340-500s used today, it says. The main reason for the change is that the "cost of having direct flights to the USA is very high" in terms of fuel and other costs, it adds.

Thai has three A340-500s in service (plus one on backlog), which it originally ordered specifically for non-stop ultra-long-range services. The flag carrier's first non-stop service to the USA started in May 2005.


The A340-500 only works in markets where the yields are very high and when their seating capacity is larger than Thai and Singapore are making them. EK operates a three class configuration with 258 seats. A three class 777-200 would be around 290 seats.


Typhoonpilot

oldbscaler

JFK-NRT with an AA 777-200 the trip is 14:10 over and 12:45 back. I would imagine PVG would be another hour longer. We fly at .83 or .84
Dennis

cactusmike

This is all nonsense to divert attention from Parker's DUI. He's dangling the new a/c, new route carrot out there but no one is buying it. The competition for China is very fierce and until management gets its sh## together service wise there are very few politicians that will reward Us Airways with plum routes like this.

Single contract is very far away. Management is not negotiating seriously, they keep trying to propose the worst of both contracts.

We may be getting some new jets at some point to replace the 737s, they are old (actually all the Boeings are very old), hopefully we will get new Boeings. I don't want to go back to the Airbus, I like going to work and actually flying the aircraft.