At the end of September 2007, we announced that we would be buying new aircraft to replace our fleet of 21 Boeing 767-300 and 57 Boeing 747-400 aircraft.
To begin with, we will be replacing these aircraft with a mixture of 12 Airbus A380 and 24 Boeing 787's. Our orders also included options on another 25 aircraft in total.
These aircraft will play a major role in improving the service we can offer to our customers, they are also quieter and cleaner delivering significant environmental improvements.
Protecting the environment was one of our main priorities in choosing our new planes. Both the A380 and Boeing 787 are much greener than the aircraft they replace:
The night noise rating system at Heathrow measures noise according to something called the 'Quota Count' or 'QC' scale. When coming in to land, both of our new aircraft measure QC 0.5 on this scale.
This compares with QC 2 for the Boeing 747-400 and QC 1 for the Boeing 767. In other words, both the A380 and the Boeing 787 make only a quarter of the noise impact made by the B747-400.
These new aircraft joining the fleet will make a huge difference in terms of our environmental performance as a company. We'll also be a better neighbour because we'll be operating planes with lower NOx emissions and lower noise levels.