China Southern Airlines (CSA) expects to be the first airline to offer daily scheduled flights out of Vancouver International Airport (YVR) using Boeing 787 aircraft, commonly known as Dreamliners.
The airline’s president, Wangeng Tan, plans to be at YVR February 19 to launch those flights, which come two weeks after Japan Airlines (JAL) became the first airline to land a Dreamliner at YVR.
“We’re the only airline to offer a first-class cabin between Vancouver and China,” said CSA spokesperson Paul Chu. “We’re also the first airline to offer first class seats on a Dreamliner out of YVR.”
CSA plans to have four first class seats as well as 24 business class seats and 200 economy seats in its Dreamliner planes that fly out of YVR.
Japan Airlines, in contrast, has no business class seats, more business class seats and 42 fewer total seats in its same-sized Dreamliner planes.
“Our 787s are configured with 144 economy and 42 business-class seats,” said Japan Airlines’ vice-president for Canada, Takayuki Kobayashi, said in a release earlier this month.
He added that this configuration was best suited to “serve the growing business traffic between British Columbia and Japan.”
Since Boeing’s Dreamliners debuted in 2009, the planes have been plagued by delivery delays, technical glitches and battery fires.
Problems were serious enough for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to announce a comprehensive review of the plane’s systems last year.
Airlines have been buying the planes because Boeing touts them as being 20% more fuel efficient than the 767s that they are replacing. The planes are believed to be the most fuel efficient plane Boeing has ever produced and the world’s first large plane to use composite materials in the construction of its airframe.
