Hawaiian Airlines said it completed installation of Aviation Partners Boeing blended winglets on a 767-300. It expects to have winglets installed on eight 767s by next summer. HA estimated that winglets will produce savings of 700-800 gal. of fuel for every round trip between the US West Coast and Hawaii.

Astraeus announced the introduction of its first A320, a former Iberia aircraft on lease from DVB Bank. "Our fleet has traditionally been 100% Boeing, but in leasing and contracting out of our aircraft over the past 18 months under our new business model, we've come across a great deal of operators who want, or need, different options," CCO and Director-Aircraft Leasing Shaun Monnery said.

Turkish Airlines exercised options on three A330s for delivery in 2012 and said it has decided to purchase two A330-200Fs, while Air New Zealand yesterday said it will replace its 15 leased 737-300s with an order for 14 A320s plus 11 purchase rights.

Air France took delivery of its first A380 Friday in Hamburg and will become the first European airline to operate the jumbo aircraft when it places it on Paris Charles de Gaulle-New York JFK service on Nov. 20. The Engine Alliance GP7200-powered aircraft seats 538 passengers (nine in first, 80 in business and 449 in economy), will carry 22 flight attendants and is one of three that AF will take through next spring. Johannesburg is scheduled to be its next A380 destination.

Rolls-Royce announced an order for Trent 700s to power 10 Virgin Atlantic Airways A330s. Contract, including TotalCare service support, is worth $720 million at list prices. Six of the aircraft were ordered directly by Virgin and the remaining four will be leased from AerCap. Delivery begins in 2011 (ATWOnline, June 23).

SAS Group currently operates nine A330s/A340s and will not continue to operate a long-haul network if it is forced to reduce that fleet to fewer than seven, President and CEO Mats Jansson told ATWOnline at last week's Star Alliance event in Newark. "The crisis hit SK in November/December 2007, at a time where we had actually been evaluating extending our long-haul fleet from 11 to 12 aircraft. But we eventually had to reduce the fleet," he said.

A Jetstar Airways A330-200 with 209 passengers and crew onboard suffered momentary erratic speed data indications from its computers in apparent bad weather and possible icing conditions on an Oct. 29 flight from Tokyo Narita to Gold Coast. The scenario bears similarities to that which investigators believe may have been a factor in the loss of an Air France -200 over the Atlantic Ocean five months ago (ATWOnline, Sept. 1).

Lufthansa Friday refused to confirm press reports that it has decided to defer A380 deliveries. CFO Stephen Gemkow said last week during the company's interim results news conference in Frankfurt that LH was discussing deferrals with manufacturers for aircraft scheduled to arrive in 2010-13. A spokesperson told ATWOnline, "We did not give any specifics regarding which aircraft types could be affected.