Aviation Week has a good piece entitled “Embraer at Crossroads,” that discusses how the company evolved from nothingness to a major player in the industry. Faced with a threat from Bombardier’s CSeries and emerging competition from China and elsewhere, Embraer has to decide what it is going to do.
Although Bombardier’s CSeries continues to faces challenges, AvWeek makes it clear that the CSeries and Pratt & Whitney’s GTF engine are influencing decisions pending by Airbus, Boeing, Embraer and airlines.
For all the silly cheap shots taken against the CSeries and GTF, there can be no denying that for the moment eyes are on Bombardier and Pratt & Whitney.
We are off today to the Airbus Innovation Days technical briefings in Wales and will no doubt hear what Airbus thinks about the CSeries and the GTF, as well as the news last week that Boeing seems to be leaning toward skipping a re-engining of the 737 and proceeding to a new airplane. A decision is expected by the end of this year.
Watch for our reports from the UK–and whether we get stranded on our return by new plumes of volcanic ash from Iceland.
Category: Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, Pratt & Whitney
Tags: Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, Embraer
With all this talk of Boeing not re-engining the 737 and instead leaning towards a new design, has there been any indication of the timeline for this? Do they mean that they will skip the re-engining and merely wait until 2020 to design a brand new single aisle, as originally envisioned? Probably not. Will they then go for a new design close to 8 years earlier than planned? Or will they wait 4 or 5 years before commencing with the new design?
From the beginning, I have believed this is just a big old poker game between Airbus and Boeing.