Royal Brunei Airlines has officially opened reservations for its first long-haul Boeing 787 Dreamliner services and as expected it will be on the Bandar Seri Begawan – Dubai – London Heathrow route that the modern generation aircraft will be introduced on a scheduled basis. The carrier will be the first Southeast Asian operator of the aircraft and is due to receive the first two of five aircraft it has on order in the coming two months.

These aircraft will first be used on regional routes from its Brunei International Airport base, but eventually they will replace the larger Boeing 777-200ERs it leases from Singapore Airlines on flights to its four long-haul destinations – Dubai, Jeddah, London and Melbourne. The carrier is also understood to be considering new markets in Southeast Asia, other parts of Australia, the Middle Asia, and India, which can be sustainably served with the efficient airliner.

Royal Brunei has opened reservations for passengers operations with the 787 to be launched on October 18, 2013 between Bandar Seri Begawan and Singapore with flights to Kuala Lumpur following from November 1, 2013. These two destinations will be served 14 times weekly and 11 times weekly with the Dreamliner up until November 30, 2013, respectively.

The type will then begin long-haul service on Royal Brunei’s daily Bandar Seri Begawan – Dubai – London Heathrow link from December 1, 2013 and is likely to be introduced on flights to Melbourne from March 1, 2014 after its third and fourth aircraft are delivered in the first quarter of next year. The airline is configuring the aircraft in a two-class arrangement of 254-seats, including space for 18 Business Class and 236 Economy passengers.

Royal Brunei currently has a small network of just 13 destinations, which alongside its long-haul routes include Bangkok, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kota Kinabalu, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Shanghai, Singapore, Surabaya. These destinations are mainly served using its short-haul Airbus equipment, but the 777s are also scheduled to serve some of them at peak times.

The airline is the dominant operator in the Brunei market and although Asian carriers China Southern Airlines, Malaysia Airlines and Singapore Airlines, and low-cost operators AirAsia and Cebu Pacific Airways, all serve Bandar Seri Begawan, Royal Brunei this year has a 75.9 per cent share of the available seat capacity from Brunei International Airport. Its closest rival is budget carrier AirAsia which has an 11.2 per cent capacity share from its link to Kuala Lumpur.

According to MIDT data, an estimated 984,000 bi-directional O&D passengers flew in and out of Brunei International Airport in 2012, up 5.6 per cent on the previous year. This traffic is dominated by the Kuala Lumpur (30.7 per cent of total), Singapore (21.4 per cent) and Kota Kinabalu (14.9 per cent) routes, which are served by multiple carriers, but also includes a number of destinations not currently served directly from the sovereign state, which are highlighted in the table below.