Notes #1 from ISTAT 2015

Snippets heard in the hallways of the 2015 ISTAT annual meeting in Phoenix:

  • The Rolls-Royce Advance engine intended for the Airbus A380neo appears to be heavy, causing Airbus to return to Engine Alliance to discuss how the GP7200 might be improved. But at best the engine probably could only gain perhaps 5% better fuel consumption, well short of the 10% goal set by Tim Clark, president of Emirates Airline, the largest A380 customer. This means Airbus would have to find 5%, more or less, from the airframe–a challenge.
  • It’s still unconfirmed but appears highly likely that Swiss Airlines will be the first operator of the Bombardier CSeries. But Jon Ostrower of The Wall Street Journal beat us to the Publish button reporting the same, along with a first half EIS of the CSeries. We’ve previously estimated a 1Q2016 EIS with a slight chance of 2Q2016.

12 Comments on “Notes #1 from ISTAT 2015

  1. It seem Leahy is encouraging RR to do a good job on A380 NEO. Leaving the door open for GE.

  2. Trade in range for a lower cost per seat with a GP7200 A380-900. The A380-800 is essentially an LR variant, and there are already enough built to cover the long range market.

  3. Is the implication that the RR advance is simply too heavy or that it is too heavy and also not gaining 10% improvement?

  4. It seems hard for me to conclude the RR Advance is too heavy, because it does not exist.

      • I think you are right but unless they get it on the A380 when and where will it get launched? Not on B777 and A350-1100 looks too far into the future to me unless B777-9 gets some more orders.

        Given that I think the A330-NEO won´t last too long I think they should bump that down and aim for 65 klb and up. A330 replacement will be lighter and have a lower requirement.

  5. The a380neo is dead .If you can’t use the advance engine the efficency gain is 8-9 % WITH sharklets . It fall short of emirates and airbus predictions but it can have an 2017 EIS . On the other hand leahy had said that there will no a380neo if the aircraft doesn’t have a 10-12 % improvement so maybe the gp7200 will be coupled with an a380-900 fusulage to increase fuel efficiency . In the end an a380neo is in trouble because airbus can’t fullfill the inpromises about the a380neo

  6. The A380 has a five year backlog and Emirates is threatening to place an order for another 100.

    Combine that with option conversions / new orders from a dozen existing operators and some new ones like Turkish, UA and ANA and we risk seeing a lot more A380 then many hoped.. bummer.

    • In my opinion about the advance to be overweight is partially true because the specification of the engines are 75-105K and the a380 need 70-72K Also GE said that the upgrade on the gp7200 would be prohibited in the absence of a compelling business case The best thing airbus can do if the above exist are
      A) Stretch
      B) Put winglets
      C)Save weight
      D)11 abreast seating
      But if the rumours are true airbus can’t do many things about the slow selling super jumbo

  7. But this is not the point we must see the broader pitcure the orderbook of the a380 is too weak . hong kong airlines will cansel the 10 aircraft air austral has ordered 2 787s so the will cansel the a380 finally virgin is on the verge of cancelling along with air france for 2 a380. The market doesn’t need the a380. This is confirmed by the FACT that amedeo can’t find customers to lease the aircraft .

  8. Nobody seems to be bothered about Trent900 improvements? Is it so because this engine ~2% less efficient than GP7200? What about TrentXWB? I have read so many times in many blogs that the test engine on A380 FTB performed so well that it can be used “AS IS” on A380NEO. Well, its painful or me to see RR loose A380NEO battle (~1000 engines for 200+ NEO orders).

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