Scoot’s Dreamliner DREAM START Heads to Singapore

Reporting live from Boeing’s Delivery Centre in Everett, Washington in the US, low-cost carrier Scoot’s Chief Executive Officer Campbell Wilson collects the first of 20 Dreamliners. Scoot has aptly named the new B787-9 aircraft with registration number 9V-OJA, DREAM START to mark the introduction of a new type of aircraft type into its fleet of existing B777-200s. The maiden flight took off from Boeing Delivery Centre at around 10+ pm on 31 January 2015 and arrived with a water canon salute at Gate C20 in Singapore Changi Airport at 9.35am on 2 January 2015 to a welcome party in the Gate’s departure lounge.

Scoot is also the first low-cost carrier in the world to operate the B787-9 and the second airline after Air New Zealand, which received the B787-9 in the second half of 2014.

The aircraft is making an 18-hour journey back to Singapore from the Boeing Delivery Centre via Osaka. It will start flights between Singapore and Perth on 5 February followed by Singapore and Hong Kong the day after.

Originally planned for delivery in November, the seat manufacturer could not deliver the seats on time, causing a delay of two months.

Scoot’s existing fleet of six 777-200s will be replaced with the Dreamliners eventually when the airline receives the first seven of the 787s. The first six Dreamliners to be delivered will be 787-9s followed by 10 787-8s and the remaining four 787-9s subsequently.

Scoot’s 787-9 has a two cabin configuration of 35 all-leather seats in ScootBiz with a 2-3-2 configuration and 340 in Economy with a 3-3-3 configuration while the 787-8 will have 335 seats.

Campbell shared that the configuration on Scoot’s 787-9 Dreamliner can fly as far as London non stop though the airline has no plans to fly long haul for the next five years as the new aircraft are not fitted with crew bunks.

Two new destinations will be introduced from June 2015 with more to be announced for October and November this year.

New features in Dream Start include chargeable Wi-Fi, power points to charge your devices (No usb ports), mood lighting and electronic windows that are much larger than in other aircraft.

We got to test Scoot WiFi on board on the maiden flight. Uploaded a couple of tweets and instagram with a 50-50% success rate.

Here are the rates for Scoot WiFi.

In its third year of deliveries, Boeing has received 1,071 firm orders from 58 customers with 231 deliveries to 30 operators as at 23 January 2015. Currently, ten 787s are produced per month at the assembly lines in Everett in Washington and Charleston in South Carolina. The production will increase to 14 a month by end of this decade.

The Dreamliner has flown more than 963,000 flight hours on more than 195,000 fights on 280 different routes to 140 markets. This aircraft type has also carried 36 million passengers.

There are three variants to the 787s – the 787-8, 787-9 and 787-10 which has an average 40 additional seats from the previous models.  The 787-8s which are the smallest of the Dreamliner fleet are positioned by Boeing as route openers, meant to replace the A330-200s and 767s. The 787-9 is a growth vertical which can replace the A330, A340 and 77-200ER. The 787-10s are the efficiency machines which Boeing claims outperforms the A350-900s. These can replace an airline’s fleet of A330, A340 and 777-200/300.

 

A tour inside Dream Start ScootBiz

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A tour inside Dream Start Economy Class

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