Korean Air has welcomed its first B747-8 Intercontinental at a ceremony held at the Boeing Everett Delivery Centre in Seattle.

“This new aircraft delivers better fuel economy. That’s important to a global airline such as ours. And it supports our goal to build and operate a first-class fleet of world-class aircraft,” said Korean Air VP and chief marketing officer Walter Cho.

With the addition of the B747- 8 Intercontinental to its fleet, Korean Air became the first airline in the world to operate both types of the B747-8. In 2012, Korean Air introduced the B747-8 Freighter and operates six of these aircraft.

About 70 per cent of the aircraft, by structural weight, incorporates new advanced aluminum alloys and carbon composites to reduce the weight drastically and giving a 16 per cent improvement in fuel consumption and emissions over its predecessor the B747-400, while generating 30 per cent less noise.

With a range of 14,815km, the new B747 will be the fastest wide body passenger jet in the world with a normal cruising speed of Mach 0.86.

Commencing September 2015, Korean Air plans to operate its B747-8 Intercontinental from Seoul on the Frankfurt and Singapore routes. The airline also plans to introduce the aircraft on the San Francisco and Hong Kong routes from November.