Odds and Ends: E-175s for Alaska; AirAsia X and Norwegian Air; Production rates

Nov. 25, 2014: E-175s for Alaska Airlines: SkyWest Airlines of the USA, a provider of contract service to several US carriers, ordered seven Embraer E-175s for planned service for Alaska Airlines. Simultaneously, Alaska announced new service from its Seattle hub, using E-175s from SkyWest to Milwaukee, Oklahoma City, and from Portland to St. Louis.

This is Alaska’s first use of the E-Jet in its system. All service to now has been with Bombardier Q400s from ALK’s sister, Horizon Air, or Bombardier CRJs from SkyWest.

Alaska is in a market battle with Delta Air Lines, which is expanding its hub at Seattle.

AirAsia X and Norwegian Air: CAPA, the Centre for Asia-Pacific Aviation, has a very good analysis about AirAsia X, the long-haul, low-fare carrier that has reported big losses for the last several quarters. This airline made it on our Storm Warning Flag list last spring. It’s got a big backlog of Airbus A330-300s, A330-900s and A350-900s and it’s announced some deferrals of the -300s. We consider this to be a shaky skyline for Airbus, particularly with the -300s.

Aviation Week has a good story about Norwegian Air Shuttle, another airline on our Storm Warning Flag list. NAS is building a long-haul business model based on the Boeing 787 in additional to plans to greatly expand its Boeing 737-based LCC model in Europe.

Production rates: We’ve written a great deal about production rates and production gaps. Flight Global’s sister company, Ascend, provides this broad look (free registration required in a particularly annoying process). The analysis missed the Airbus notice to the industry to plan to take production rates of the A320 to 54/mo in 2018, but otherwise this is a good analysis which happens to pretty well coincide with our views we’ve expressed throughout the year. This is a good one-stop piece.

 

 

9 Comments on “Odds and Ends: E-175s for Alaska; AirAsia X and Norwegian Air; Production rates

  1. if you plot the NB production rate waypoints available one can see that they essentially track each other if linearly connected.
    Boeings announcements just reach further forward ( Papier ist geduldig ).
    Of interest would be the ramp up to the announced numbers ahead of each point in time. Continuous increase from one waypoint to the next or stepped / steeper increases just ahead of a checkpoint.

  2. Mr. Hamilton,

    I understand this is your web site and you make the choices you want to.

    However, it’s surprising and disappointing to see Robert Dewar’s interview (nov. 24) behind the paywall.

    It would have been a nice gesture towards the many enthusiasts who come here to let everyone read the interview.

    I understand that you are not targeting the enthusiast. I understand your aim to monetize your particular professionnal competencies.

    But an argument can be made that this interview is more a subject of general interest. As you still have some freely available and interesting content in that category, opening public access to Mr. Dewar’s interview would seem compatible with your new business model.

    In addition, Mr. Dewar himself would probably not be against a wider availability of this interview.

    Thanks,

    Murray Henley

    • Thanks, Murray, for your comment. We actually discussed internally whether to put this in the Freewall or Paywall and for various reasons decided to go Paywall. For the value-added to our paying customers, we decided to go Paywall. It’s a tough call, sometimes.

      • I suggest doing what some other sites do – let paid content go free after some time has passed (eg a week or a month). The paying folks still get their timely content, while later everyone else (including search engines and people wanting to link) sees it too.

  3. Pingback: Embraer - Aviation News - 25 Nov 2014 -

  4. Asia X and A330: As I recall I was dissed for the same observation (not by Leeham)

    NAS has been on my quiet question mark for what they are doing and how they are going about it. Seems a shaky setup with the Irish branch office (so to speak).

    I do not think Axia X is likely to take the A330NEOs either and that was one of the NEO drivers.

    Again not that the A330NEO will not sell, I just don’t think its the big ticket numbers. Nudged up to 250 maybe, that seems marginal profit wise no matter how much its been paid for though maybe worth it to blacken Boeings eye (and nicely done)

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