First visit to Perth by Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, HS-TQB of Thai Airways: Sun 21 September 2014

21 September 2014 – copyright David Eyre

The Boeing 787-8 version of the Dreamliner visited Perth for the first time on Sunday 21 September 2014, with the arrival of Thai Airways flight TG483 from Bangkok.

The first service was operated by HS-TQB, which departed Bangkok as flight TG483 at 12:24am Bangkok time (1:24am Perth time), and after a flight time of 5 hours 58 minutes, landed on runway 03 at 7:22am. It departed Perth back to Bangkok at 9:22am as TG484, taking off runway 03, and landed at Bangkok 6 hours 36 minutes later.

Thai’s Boeing 787 is only being used temporarily on Perth services for the five times per week TG483/484 service, until 25 October 2014 (arriving 26 October 2014). The 787s are needed for their Bangkok-Fukuoka (Japan) service. The TG483/484 service will revert back to Airbus A330-300s from 26 October 2014 (arriving Perth 27 October 2014). Thai’s website currently shows that the 787 will return to Bangkok-Perth services from 29 March 2015. This is subject to change.

HS-TQB is the second of six Boeing 787-8s on order, and is so new that it was only delivered from Seattle to Bangkok on 16-17 September 2014.
HS-TQB’s arrival in Perth was only its third revenue flight and its first international flight – the previous two flights were made the day before – two short 1-hour domestic services within Thailand. This was also the first visit to Perth by the smaller Boeing 787-8 model.

Air New Zealand’s larger 787-9 made the first Boeing 787 visit to Perth on 12 September 2014.

The ‘Royal Silk’ business class cabin contains 24 seats in four rows of lie-flat seats in a 2-2-2 abreast layout. The Economy section has 240 seats in 3-3-3 abreast layout.

Thai Airways ordered six Boeing 787-8s and two 787-9s, all leased for 12 years from ILFC. Four 787-8s are to be delivered from July to December 2014 and two more by June 2015. In 2017, two of the larger Boeing 787-9s will be delivered.

Their first 787-8, HS-TQA, was delivered on 17-18 July 2014, and entered service on 25 July 2014, operating daily one-hour domestic flights between Bangkok and Chiang Mai in Thailand until 10 September 2014, to train up the cabin crews. It then operated daily international services between Bangkok and Tokyo from 11 September 2014.