Farnborough Air Show, July 16: MRJ program analysis

After a long drought of orders or even LOIs and MOUs, the Mitsubishi MRJ program saw some life at this Farnborough Air Show. Sales of Japan’s first commercial airplane since the propeller-era’s YS-11 stalled with orders from SkyWest… Read More

Farborough Air Show, July 16: Snipe hunts in an era of model improvements

Upate, 5:30am PDT: The Wall Street Journal has an article that is more or less on point to the theme of this post. It doesn’t matter what the competition does, it’s always inferior–until you do it yourself. The… Read More

Airbus A330-800 and -900neo, first analysis part 2: engines and maintenance costs

Further to our initial analysis of the launched Airbus A330neo, here is our follow up diving deeper into engine matters and maintenance costs. The A330neo engine We met with Rolls Royce Vice President Customer Marketing Richard Goodhead to… Read More

Farnborough Air Show, July 15: Orders summary

Here are the orders and commitments announced today that we saw–there could be others we haven’t seen: Airbus: Avolon (a lessor) ordered 15 A330neos; CIT Aerospace, MOU for 16 A330-900s, five A321neos; SMBC Aviation (lessor), 110 A320neo and… Read More

Farnborough Air Show, July 15: WA State and Mitsubishi; PW GTF issue revealed, finally;

The news that Mitsubishi will stage flight testing for its new MRJ 90-seat jet program at Moses Lake (WA) is, parochially, good news. And it is exactly the type of non-industrial aerospace business that we’ve been advocating for… Read More

Farnborough Air Show, July 15: VLA program analysis: A380, B747-8I, 777-9, [and the wishful thought of an A350-1100]

Fabrice Bregier, CEO of Airbus Commercial, threw cold water on the prospects of an A380neo and an A350-1100, the latter to compete with the Boeing 777-9. Bregier’s position on the A350-1100 leaves Boeing with a monopoly at the… Read More