Belgium to replace Airbus A330

[nils]

article in dutch: http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/957/Binnenland ... rbus.dhtml

short translation:

the Lease agreement between French company AVICO and the Belgian Defence (or the lease of an Airbus A300-322, CS-TMT, operated by HiFly) wil expire at the end of this year.
the Belgian minister of Defence, Pieter De Crem, says they are now looking for a new aircraft to replace the airbus when the contract expires. over the past 4 years, the Belgians used the A330 for a fixed sum of 11.6 million euro/year.
although he did not specify if it was to be a new buy, secondhand buy or another lease.


my own comment:

the lease agreement and the use of the A330 has always been controvertial. there were some doubts when french/portuguese company AVICO/HiFly was selected for the deal, over other companies within Belgium.
second note was that the aircraft flew only little over half the ammount of anual flighthours contracted (1200hrs/year, rather then the contracted 2000), and third, most of the time the aircraft flew less then half capacity (exsample state visits when the aircraft carried 45 passengers, when the aircraft has capacity for 238, other alternatative aircraft could have been used.)

i think the new deal will either be secondhand or lease, but since even more budgetcuts have been announced recently, my guess is it will be aother lease.
i would suggest leasing a smaller but equally capable aircraft (witch meets the Passenger/cargo covertible requirement).
suggested platforms would be the smaller Airbus A330-200 and the Boeing 767-200ER.

[aviodromefriend]

With Dutch and Belgian defences getting more and more knit into each other: There are two ex-RNLAF Fokker 50s available, which could be enough to carry 45 pax.

[Stafsels]

Why not use our third DC-10 the T-255?
KLu only can hold on to that widebody untill the end of 2014.

Why not merge the use from 336sq and the the KD-10's (including de T-255) with the future to be used A-400M from Belgium?
Let wel: the use, not the squadrons!!!

Greetings,

Stafsels

[Stratofreighter]

http://www.pieterdecrem.be/index.php?id ... 731d503f16

Ministerraad van 19 april 2013

Meerjarig contract voor een luchttransportcapaciteit op lange afstand

De vervanging van de huidige transportcapaciteit op Airbus A330 kadert in de behoefte aan strategisch luchttransport van Defensie. De toestellen ter invulling van deze capaciteit moeten op een flexibele manier inzetbaar zijn om bijna uitsluitend operationele taken uit te voeren over lange afstanden. Momenteel beschikt Defensie hiervoor dus over een ‘wide body’ toestel, de A330. Studies hebben aangetoond dat een ‘narrow body’ toestel een groot deel van de huidige geplande opdrachten zou kunnen uitvoeren. Een groot deel van de vereiste diensten zou dus door een vliegtuig van het laatste type kunnen worden uitgevoerd, wat de kosten ervan zal doen dalen.

Bovendien is de nood aan toestellen van het type ‘narrow body’ ook zeer hoog binnen het EATC (European Air Transport Command), een internationaal samenwerkingsverband volgens het concept ‘Pooling & Sharing’, waar de Belgische Defensie ook deel van uitmaakt.

Translation into English through
http://translate.google.com/translate?s ... 731d503f16

[nils]

narrow-bodies?, wel, there are plenty of secondhand airbus A320's and Boeing 737/757 out there.
i think the 757 should fit the bill just right.

[nils]

i might have some news regarding this deal.

last weekend i visited a fly in at Ursel AirField and 21 squadron personel at the Belgian AF stand,
informed me they are looking into the Airbus A320 as the prefered aircraft of choice.
although they did not specify if it was going to be 1 or 2 aircraft.