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One of the big names in long-haul flying is about to make a couple of large purchases.
Bloomberg reports that Qatar Airways is looking to upgrade its fleet and will do so by purchasing so-called “wide-body” planes from both Boeing and Airbus. A wide-body plane has two aisles and is larger than a “narrow-body” jetliner, which has a single aisle.
Qatar’s current fleet already is split between Boeing and Airbus. The company’s latest annual report, released last July, says that it has 250 planes, 106 of which are Airbus models and 104 of which are made by Boeing. (There’s also a small number of smaller aircrafts from other plane builders.) It is not clear what the final split will be after the new purchase.
The Federal Aviation Administration recently stepped up its oversight of Boeing’s wide-body planes as well as its 737 Max models after some whistleblower warnings about build quality. The planes remain popular with carriers, however. According to Boeing’s orders and deliveries page, Qatar Airways is waiting on unfilled orders for 111 planes from the company, and 86 of them are the wide-body 777X and 787 Dreamliner planes.