Virgin Australia shareholder Etihad Airways has placed orders for two more Airbus A330-200s in a deal worth US$418 million at current list prices.
The Rolls-Royce Trent-powered aircraft will be delivered in January and March 2014 respectively. They will be configured with 22 lie-flat business class and 240 economy seats and will operate throughout the airline’s network to support existing A330 operations to including to Brisbane, Singapore, Europe, China and Africa.
The Abu Dhabi-based carrier has also converted an order for seven A320s to A321s.
Etihad’s president and CEO James Hogan said of the A321 order: “Our decision to convert seven of our A320s on order into A321s reflects the increasingly strong demand we are seeing across our different routes and we look forward to taking delivery of our first in November 2013.”
Meanwhile, Etihad’s network is expanding to Hong Kong via a partnership with Air Seychelles in which it has a 40 per cent stake. The thrice-weekly service beginning in February will be operated by Air Seychelles using A330-200s configured in an 18/236 configuration.
