Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
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- Focus on quality not slowing innovation, says GKN April 18, 2024
- Boeing defends 787, 777 against whistleblower charges April 17, 2024
- Dissecting Boeing CEO’s statement next new airplane will cost $50bn April 15, 2024
- Bjorn’s Corner: New engine development. Part 3. Propulsive efficiency April 12, 2024
Odds and Ends at the Paris Air Show, Day 2
Odds and Ends at the Paris Air Show, Day 2
Airbus
Airbus owned the day again with a bunch of orders, including capturing a Boeing 737 operator, Garuda Indonesia. For the A320neo (In this context, we’re not counting SAS, which already operates A320s.) Up to now, Boeing has been dismissing the sales of the neo as being only to A320 airlines, as well as winning deals on price and asserting the neo only brings the airplane to “parity” with the 737-800. Airbus’ John Leahy, COO-customers, counters that airlines aren’t buying Boeing’s line and are buying the neo because it is more efficient than the 737-800. So, it would seem, lessors are also convinced. ILFC previously ordered the aircraft. Air Lease Corp, CIT Aerospace and GECAS also placed orders.
The ALC order could be considered particularly significant. Its CEO, Steven Udvar-Hazy, previously was cool to the neo and now placed a bet for 50 of them.
Boeing
Expectations for Boeing had generally been low, since Boeing seems to go out of its way to say it doesn’t “save up” orders for air shows (though in reality, neither does Airbus). But Boeing made a big splash yesterday with 17 orders for the slow-selling 747-8. It added two more today from GECAS, along with a mixture of 777s and 737s. The Wall Street Journal has a good summary of Tuesday’s orders, and a general recap of Monday’s, here.
Bombardier The Canadian company announced an order for 10+10 CS300s from Korean Airlines, with purchase rights for another 10. With four new orders announced within the last three weeks, is this the momentum the market has been looking for? The actual numbers are still modest. The four orders aggregated to 33 firm ones plus options, bringing the tally to 123 firm. While some may consider the number small vs. Airbus (and it is) and Boeing, BBD’s Gary Scott said that his sales team is seeking a variety of customers to have a broad base by the time the airplane enters service in 2013. He previously predicted there will be orders for e300 by EIS.
At a press briefing by Pratt & Whitney president David Hess, Hess remarked that BBD’s production slots are no sold out until 2015. PW provides the GTF engine for the airplane. BBD eventually plans to ramp up production to 20/mo, but plans to go slow initially.
CFM
As we forecast on AirInsight, CFM landed its first orders and a lot of them. This provides robust competition to PW, which already has planned upgrades to the GTF to improve fuel efficiency at the rate of about 1% per year. PW forecasts that it will have 1m hours of operating experience by the time A320neo enters service in October 2015.
CFM rejigged its engine with a larger fan and a seventh LPT stage to improve fuel efficiency, which fell short of the GTF. Competition between the two OEMs will be particularly intense for many of the neo orders announced today by Airbus.
Pratt & Whitney
See CFM. Through Tuesday, PW edged out CFM in the engine order race.
CFM was selected for 172 aircraft (135 LEAP, 37 CFM56. PW powers the CSeries, NEO and MRJ, for which 180 orders were placed plus five aircraft powered by the PW4074D. We expect that to change with one or more anticipated big orders that will be powered by LEAP. TBD A large number of NEO orders did not include a selection.
Does the LEAP really have 7 stages in the LPT? If it were the compressor, that would seem okay but a seven stage turbine sounds awfully inefficient?
Rob
So, did Boeing sell another 2 B-747-8s today? You seemed to say that when you mentioned the GECAS order, along with the B-777s and B-737NGs they ordered. How many total airplanes did GECAS order?
Well, well… what a difference 6 months make…
http://leehamnews.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/lessors-banks-in-blistering-critique-of-airbus-neo/
Suddenly they are falling over themselves to book production slots… Next thing you know, the banks will be willing to finance them! 🙂
UKair : “Well, well… what a difference 6 months make…”
😀 😀
I think some folks here should sit back for a moment and think this over.
Us your own common sense and do not listen to experts / guru’s / billionaires to much.
They say things often for (opportunitic) reasons & change their mind too.
Yes. also Udvar. Sometimes he has it wrong, changes his mind & acts quickly.
Sometimes he stears everyone right so their is more room for him on the left side..
Not inefficient in terms of (little bit) better SFC, but what does that mean for weight and maintenance costs, one gas to ask? The PW GTf has only 3 LPT stages…
http://aeroturbopower.blogspot.com/2011/06/leap-x-striking-back.html
Airlines are buying the plane, so of course lessors will follow. They may still not be happy about the residual values of their current A320s, but being in a huff about that won’t make them money.
In a ranked ( top down ) ordering of
320NEO
320Classic | 737ng
737Classic
accelerated devalue will rise from the bottom and hit 737 types first.
Aggravated by environmental constraints looming on the (European) horizon.
The A320Classic in that context will get some protection from commonality.
No banker/investor/leaser likes hawks among his pidgeons 😉
IMHO UDH’s A350Mk1 rant was a “spell” cast to protect Dreamliner investment.
Looking back the A350Mk1 would have sported competitive technology and
would have been well on par with the 787, right?
Airbus just announced a Winglet retrofit program for existing A320 users. I would like to have a stake in that program. Thousands of aircraft, 2 (?) % fuel efficiency improvement,. Another no brainer business case it seems. Also for leasing companies, improving residual values.
“Tom Williams, executive vice president, programmes, said: “We are confident that our customers will appreciate not only the benefits from improved fuel efficiency that retrofitting large winglets will bring to their in-service A320 Family fleets, but also from the enhanced residual value.”
http://www.themanufacturer.com/uk/content/12144/Airbus_announces_retrofitting_of_A320_fleet
In fairness, they announced they are confident that they will be able to implement the programme they started researching. But they tried this before and failed, I believe.
I agree Andreas, I feel sceptical that they will be able to achieve something they couldn’t with their previous flight tests of their own large winglet and the one from Winglet Technology. Any performance improvement will be marginal, in my opinion…
It is quite interesting that when Airbus launched NEO, they based the business case on an estimated 4000 sales in 15 years… They nearly achieved a quarter in…. 6 months. This is without a question the best programme investment they have ever made. I have no doubt that they are actively looking at a steady ramp up past the EIS in 2015. I would not be surprised by a 50+/month figure.
I was wondering how the Airshow went. Thanks for the updates!