The seat in the cabin can only extend the fight time by 1 hour. So they can only fly max 9 hour sectors. (Might be 9.5, I'm not totally sure)
What I had heard was that these (these 2 and the other 2 that went to the RAAF) aircraft were all produced for Qantas to the same spec. The RAAF wants them as they are the same as the other 2 the just got, so the leasing company has jacked up the price. So Qantas is looking at wether they should offload them. As Todd says , they need them for PEK. They can't use any other -200 to fly that sector due to the limitation above.
The use of the seat in the cabin for AKL-LAX and SYD-BOM was a limited agreement, now expired, but it was only for the second crew rest, due to the requirement to have 4 pilots on those sectors. The aircraft had the normal crew rest also.
Last edited by Dave C; 9th November 2016 at 12:54 PM.
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