Lufthansa's 747 combi's stored at HAM

[Frederik Peeters]

I just red that lufthansa was sending 2 of its Boeing 747-430M to the desert. But they changed there plans, now the 2 planes are stored at HAM untill March 2010. They are going to put them back in service.
Now I was thinking why did they decided this. Will they maybe send the planes to Brussels airlines? And if not, what are they going to do with the 2 aircrafts?

Frederik

[cathay belgium]

Come'on LH,send them to us !!
Forget the A330, we'll need the combi's!!
Sint and Santa are coming' ,they'll bring each a 747 !
CX-B

( or just daydreaming, and wait another year to become a real LH daughter! )

[RoMax]

I suppose we will hear more about SN and LH their plans over 2 weeks when SN is joinging Star Alliance. On the same time the yearly board-meeting of Star Alliance will be in BRU, so I suppose these day's will be interesting. It is a perfect day for Star carriers to announce new routes to BRU and for SN it is a perfect moment to announce their news about routes and their fleet.
When they will return to service in March 2010 it is maybe possible that they will go to SN because SN will deploy the new long haul plane in the beginning of the summer season.

[NCB]

Could be good for SN indeed...
HAM is an interesting choice since they specially moved the aircraft from FRA to HAM for the "storage"...
LHT facilities at HAM are more robust, refitting and painting comes to mind...
Who knows, maybe...? After all LH will be receiving 2 x A380 in the spring/summer and 1x A380 in the fall...

[RoMax]

A combi 747 is perfect for some of SN's AFI destinations. Some destinations have low load-factors but are very profitable because of the freigth.(Remember in october a freight load-factor of 97%)
And like NCB said, HAM is the place where "big works" are done by LH technics.

[regi]

and nobody thought about "cheap" refitted back up for the A380 when those birds come into action , but will fail now and then?

[cnc]

its more likely the A380's will replace the 744 rather then the 744M so why waste money on them to use as backup when full pax 744's come available?

[NCB]

Indeed, reconfiguring a B744M to full pax only as a B744/A380 back-up is too expensive.
The upcoming A380 deliveries will be reshuffling other aircraft in the fleet and ultimately reduce the need to put the combi's back in service.

They also have an A346 in storage if I'm not mistaken.

[Buzz]

Indeed, reconfiguring a B744M to full pax only as a B744/A380 back-up is too expensive.

I thought they operated the 744 combi's only for a short while as combi's, and that they were flying around as full pax aircraft for quite some time now?

[NCB]

You could be right, I don't know. Perhaps someone can clarify?
If that's the case I take back what I said above.

[euroflyer]

Yeah, to my knowledge they have been converted to full pax versions long ago and have been used only as full pax aircraft during the past years.

The reasons why they have been stored in HAM and not in FRA is quite simple I guess: There is no space in FRA to store aircraft for a longer period, every inch of the tarmac is used somehow for the day to day operations. When LH faced out the A300 earlier this year they were moved away from FRA (to HAM and DRS as far as I am aware) as well.

The A380 will only come into service with LH later in 2010 was announced yesterday in the German papers. The first should arrive in early summer, but LH will only start operations with them they said if they have two fully operational aircraft available.

However, the question remains: what will happen to those two B747 birds? Is it realistic in the current market to sell them? Could they be moved to LH Italia to start longhaul operations from MXP? Could they even go to Austrian and replace their B777 (as that aircraft is not used anywhere else in the LH group?)? Or could they go indeed to SN? Or is LH just waiting for the economy to pick up again in 2010 and bring them back into service?

Lets see and speculate

[NCB]

The reasons why they have been stored in HAM and not in FRA is quite simple I guess: There is no space in FRA to store aircraft for a longer period, every inch of the tarmac is used somehow for the day to day operations. When LH faced out the A300 earlier this year they were moved away from FRA (to HAM and DRS as far as I am aware) as well.

Could be, but there is plenty of space next and in front of LHT hangars in FRA.
There's probably room for 6 or 7 B744's there.

Are the A300's receiving heavy maintainance before delivery to their new owners?
Could explain why they were moved to HAM?

[Conti764]

I just red that lufthansa was sending 2 of its Boeing 747-430M to the desert. But they changed there plans, now the 2 planes are stored at HAM untill March 2010. They are going to put them back in service.
Now I was thinking why did they decided this. Will they maybe send the planes to Brussels airlines? And if not, what are they going to do with the 2 aircrafts?

Frederik

Why would SN maintain a small subfleet of only 2 Boeings? I know these planes could have much value to the company on their African routes, but 2 Boeings isn't much and they'll have to train some crew to operate on only 2 planes...

Although it would be great to see the 747 in SN's colors... And now, my biggest dream in aviation SN will evolve to a Boeing fleet in stead of an Airbus fleet and will get some non-ER T7's i.s.o. the A333's Okay, now I'll stop daydreaming

[Conti764]

Never mind, my mistake

[134flyer]

Pure speculation of course, but IIRC the A380's were planned to enter service starting the 2010 Summer season, so perhaps they need to hold on a little bit longer to the 744's, to make up for the delayed delivery of the A380's.

Another possibility is that they need to keep the 744's to fill up the gaps after some A330/340's have been passed on to other LH Group airlines:

- OS: 2 (leased) 767's will leave the fleet and OS has hinted that they might be replaced by 2 777's, depending the restructuring of the airline and their longhaul network. There are also wild rumours that 2 LH A340's will replace the 2 767's.
- LH Italia is rumoured to start longhaul operations out of MXP with A340's starting the 2010 Summer season
- Perhaps a LH A330 (or A340) will go to SN?

All of the above is of course pure speculation, but personally I think that the 744's will remain at LH, and will not go to one of the other airlines, but you never know...

[euroflyer]

Could be, but there is plenty of space next and in front of LHT hangars in FRA.
There's probably room for 6 or 7 B744's there.

There is room in front of the LHT hangars, but that is used on a daily basis for the necessary work on the planes which are in service. I doubt there is much room left to store 2 B747s for several weeks or months. In all the years I do fly in and out of FRA several times a week I have never seen any planes stored there for longer than a few days.

[regi]

I chose the side of 134flyer.

[regi]

and this explains a bit more:
delay of the LH A380 delivery:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... 43Xa3c9yfM