Air Canada To Acquire 4 Singapore Airlines A330's

Simple Flying

By Nicholas Cummins

Published Oct 20, 2018

It has come to light that Air Canada plans to acquire four Airbus A330s that were recently retired from the Singapore Airlines fleet.

Singapore a350 — A Singapore Airlines A350

Airlines swap, buy and sell planes all the time, but what makes this interesting is these planes will feature a completely different interior than Air Canada's usual offering.

Why are they buying these Singapore Airbus A330s?

In 2019, Air Canada plans to retire their fleet of Boeing 767s. They currently have six in their fleet and plan to either retire the jets or move them to their smaller subsidiary airline Rouge.

This will mean they need the additional A330s as a replacement until they have new jets in the future.

The A330s were retired back in 2017 from the Singapore fleet and passed to TAP Air Portugal. They, however, are now starting to receive their order of new A330-900neo's (They have 14 on order!) and as such, no longer need the planes.

The A330 in TAP Air Portugal Livery. At this point, it seems these four jets are playing a game of musical chairsIn the Air Canada Being 767s, there are 187 standard economy seats and 24 business class seats. In the replacement Singapore A330s, there are 255 standard economy seats and 30 recliner business class seats.

What is the new plane like?

Here is a seat map of the plane:

As you can see, the new Singapore A330 has plenty of room for extra passengers and would allow Air Canada to have more profitability on the routes.

There is one problem however, this is a photo of the current business class found on most Air Canada planes:

The typical reverse herringbone seat found on Air Canada.

Compared to what's on offer on the Singapore A330, there is a remarkable quality difference. The Singapore airline seats only recline 172 degrees, as opposed to the complete flat beds found on Air Canada. As such, Air Canada is listing these seats as Premium economy, not Business Class.

The plan is to update these planes to the current Air Canada A330 configuration (of all three classes) but that will not happen until 2019.

This means that passengers might be mighty confused when they get on board and see the yellow pale interior. However, this is great for customers...

When will they be flying?

The first few flights have been scheduled for mid-2019.

And that's fantastic, as here is the real win for customers, those business class seats on the A330 are now available as premium economy seats, for only a few dollars more than standard economy.