my comments - Korean Air to place a big wide body aircraft order

Korean Air has officially announced that it is in the market to place a large order of wide body aircraft to replace a part of its aging fleet as well as to cater to future long haul expansion to Europe and North America. 

The airline's president stated clearly that the carrier is not interested to order the Airbus A330NEO and instead has shortlisted the requirement between the B777X, A350 and B787 families. KE currently still holds 10 options on an old Boeing 787-9 order of which it ordered 10 firm units initially.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-19/korean-air-mulling-large-widebody-jet-order-for-expansion

Comments:

Currently, KE's 29fleet mix till 2020 consists of 8 different aircraft types

10 B748s + 11 B747Fs
21 A333s + 08 A332s
10 B789s
14 B772s + 24 B77Ws + 4 B773s + 12 B77Fs
10 A380s
22 B739s + 30 B7M8s
30 A321NEOs
10 A223s

From the above 8 different aircraft types by 2025, the B748, A330s, B772s, B773s and A380s are not expected to be actively flown in commercial service. 

Personally speaking, KE has too many different aircraft types in its mainline fleet and this can be reduced in the following manner as part of the upcoming large wide body order

a) 10 A380s + 10 B748s replaced by 25 B777-9Xs (+5 for expansion)

b)Convert the 10 B748s into freighters as it has 4 B744Fs to replace initially so the incremental 6 units can be used for network expansion 

c) 14 B772s replaced by exercising the options for 10 B789s + order 10 more for regional and long haul expansion

d) 29 A330s replaced by 30 B787-10s

In this manner, the current long haul fleet from having A380s, B748s, B777s, A330s and B787s i.e. 5 different types gets reduced to 2 types only i.e. 50 B777s (26 B779s + 24 B77Ws) and 60 B787s (30 B781s + 30 B789s) which easily covers all their current and future route requirements (from a flying range perspective) + having 3 less aircraft types in the wide body fleet mix enables in the long run massive annual cost savings across the board. 

The Airbus A350 family line is not mentioned by me because I feel it is not required to add a third different aircraft type into the fleet mix + all the routes it can operate the B787 family line can also do so without any issues. Kindly note that I think very highly of the A350 family however for KE in this case, I really dont see the need for it from a commercial and operational stand point as fleet standardization benefits outweigh the need to have a third different aircraft type operating. 

For Boeing to get such a large order, it must provide an extra incentive such as be willing to fully pay for the cost to re-train KE's A330s pilots to the B787 family